Soob

It's funny, I sit here and contemplate a loss that is not my own and yet, for what ever reason, I'm completely befuddled. At a loss as to how I should feel, moreover how I should act. The phone call was made, the promise of "anything I can do" laid forth the shallow and yet somehow compulsive "apologies" made. But what now?

We were and are a fraternal trio, a bond formed during the bright and endless years of our childhood. We'd suffered the emotional horror's of childhood's locomotion into adulthood together, shared the deepest and darkest of ourselves and could (and can) communicate a thought or emotion through a simple glance or off handed gesture.

Remove the genetic aspect and we are, by otherwise definition, brothers. Adulthood separates us only through the physical reality of distance and, despite sworn fraternity during our late childhood, the painful aspect of three branches growing in different directions.

The fact remains when we all three meet the weight of reality peels away and there remains an essence of timelessness. And this essence is as delicious as it is fleeting. Gone too soon as we meander back into our respective life endeavors.

We'll meet again sometime this week, and the rendezvous won't be the usual celebration, rather a morose and sad affair as we will be memorializing the death of the second of our fathers in the last two years. The first last year, the second just yesterday.

Two fine men gone in as many years. Two gone and both to be celebrated for their excellence as men, Vietnam veterans and, more importantly, Fathers.

Godspeed Tom Calahan II.

Godspeed Pappi DeBacco

You're both the essence of excellence.