We anchored at gorgeous Los Frailes, Baja Mexico, and I carefully set the cockpit stage for my birthday. I found a Paulaner Hefe wiesen bier at one of the grocery stores in Puerto Vallarta, and had tucked it away in our boat refrigerator: "I'm gonna have this beer on my birthday."
My best friend Pat used to always call me on my birthday. He died suddenly and unexpectedly on Christmas Day in 2016. I won't drag you through all the soul wrenching heartache and pain that it involves. But let's just say that I've always been a stubborn man. I'm stubborn even about death. So what I've taken to do on my birthday, is first, I get Pat's picture out from it's resident place in the v-berth. Then I meditate - not meditate like "think about shit"- I mean meditate where I clear my mind and think of nothing. Nothingness. Then I try to reach into my sub-conscious and pull Pat out - I want to hear his voice, talk history, laugh. It doesn't always work. But as I mentioned, I am stubborn. The miracle is: sometimes it works.
And then there we are, together again. Sitting in the cockpit in Los Frailes, Baja Mexico, for my 50th birthday. And I have never in my life been so happy to see him.
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| Please allow me to introduce you to my buddy, Pat. Also I have my special birthday beer, grilling tools, and chicken. |
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| How I wish you were here. |
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| Freshman year of college. |
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| This is the last picture of Pat and I together. We were outside of St. Louis in Furgeson, MO, where riots were raging. Many people, mostly African Americans, had fled the violence and holed up in the same extended stay hotel where I stayed. Pat and I sat outside, where folk had tabernacled, and smoked cigarettes and passed around whiskey. People were shaking and crying. It was freezing cold. It was an extreme, emotional time, when Pat and I, as two white men of modest privilege, were confronted with the ugliness of our past and the terror of our present. |
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