| It took about two hours for the news to really register with me, and then it hit me pretty hard. This will be the second friend I’ve lost in a month; last month Rob Oostmeyer, whom I’ve known since high school, had a massive heart attack while playing basketball. He died instantly. Rob was funny and smart and was, beneath deep & hilarious levels of sarcasm, a genuinely warm person who loved his friends. He was fond of Stevie Wonder and of Bach’s Mass in B Minor. He may have been the first of my friends to start calling me “Johnny D,” which is what all my friends from high school eventually wound up calling me. I had not seen him since 1999, and now I will never see him again. |