The Loss of a Friend

I mourn the loss of a very old and dear friend this week. He was in a fatal traffic accident in Dallas this week...leaving a void in the lives of many.

We were high school buds first, high school sweethearts off and on for a time, then buddies again. Being young and immature, we went through phases of extreme devotion or extreme frustration with one another. Our friendship began at age 15 and lasted until age 47. Our friendship began in the excitement and idealism of our teenage years, and most recently found itself in the reality of life....finding contentment in the joys of it, realizing the sorrows of it, and talking about you hopefully are constantly growing and redefining yourself.

I tried to write about Eric earlier this week, only to find myself not knowing where to start. I wasn't quite brave enough to put thought or feeling to paper....(er, computer screen). Another wonderful friend of both of ours, who now lives in Virginia, and writes a wonderful blog, wrote beautiful words about him yesterday. I finally decided to sit down myself and see if I could find the words.

My friend's name is Eric Heebner.  From the time we were teenagers, he was determined to be different. And he succeeded well in that endeavor.

 He wanted to prove to people who did not believe he would be successful, that YES, he would be. He wanted to be successful in friendships, family life, school, his career (both military and post-military), hobbies and pursuits. He pursued life with gusto...mixed with lots of caring and compassion. He wanted to see the world, and he did see probably most of it.

Eric seemed to succeed in everything he touched...his military career was successful, his undergraduate and graduate career was successful, his writings were successful enough to be published. Since I was fortunate enough to reconnect with him in adulthood, I knew him as a nurse, nurse practitioner, public health officer, writer, speaker, and most recently, business owner and practitioner of his own mental health business. But it's not his professional life that I want to write about.

He chose to reconnect with people and make amends many years ago to anyone he felt he might have hurt. He chose to forgive those in his past that had hurt him. He was on a mission to make any "wrong" relationships "right" again. He found me about 10 years ago, living in another state, and we began to re-establish a friendship and catch up with one another and follow one another's family life, career, etc. He was a husband, father, brother, son, and wonderful friend.

Eric was kind, warm and extremely funny. But one of the most tragic things about Eric to many of us who knew him well, was that he seemed to still be a lonely soul in many ways, and still seemed to be seeking something that was illusive to him. I'm not sure he ever quite grasped just how many people truly loved him, wanted to be his friend, just enjoyed his company. If he felt he had let you down in any way, he would often "retreat" from the friendship for a little while....seeming to not understand that most people accept the flaws of each other and move on. He could be incredibly tough on himself.

This morning, I was re-reading one of his older blogs...and came across these words, used in describing himself.

"I study hard, work hard and always want people in my life that 1) Reciprocates 2) Encourages 3) Forgives 4) Grows and 5)Judicioulsy exercise Ecclesiastes chapter 3 in friendship. A tall order indeed. Who am I that I should ask for so much? Worthy of my own expectations? (See #3) I know who I am not, I know that I can be something worse and have. I know my friends have said the same about themselves. This is why they are my friends, partly."

* I left his misspelling in his words just as he wrote them. Eric was a NOTORIOUSLY bad speller, and I am a very good one. In high school, he would usually show me his homework so that I could correct the spelling. It became something we joked about later in our 40s.

In 2002, he sent me a package that had a piece of lava in it that he had picked up somewhere in one of his many travels. He had carried it for years, and was now sending it to me. I was going through a particularly tough time, and quite down on myself. I wish I had kept the words he had written, so that I could quote them here. But what he sent to me was more than a piece of lava...he sent me encouragement. And the meaning behind the words I have forgotten, was that there are times in our life that we are going to be refined by fire. We will feel like we will never survive the intensity. But we will..and when we are in the fire, we are being refined. And we will come out as something very unique, if we allow ourselves.

Now...knowing Eric and his quirky and hilarious sense of humor...he probably picked that lava rock up at a landscaping store and sent it to me with those words. I know him quite well. But the gesture of sending that piece of lava, carefully placed in bubble wrap and placed in a cardboard box with words of encouragement for me showed the kind of friend he was. It has set in my office since 2002...and my office has changed locations 3 times since then. The rock has always made the move with me.

So thank you my friend....for high school "love notes", holding of hands, dances, getting me into trouble in choir, making me laugh on school bus trips, for sharing your poetry with me, for movie dates, for being brave enough to face my parents when we were late once, for helping me learn you can argue and still speak to one another (well...after the obligatory length of high school silence), for meeting me at the school bus with flowers you brought to me to take to drill team camp, for late night phone calls (I talked under the covers of my bedspread as if that really fooled my mom), for eating the inedible brownies and cookies I made for your our sophomore year when I was your spirit booster for football (or pretending like you did), for the kimono you sent from Korea in our early 20s, for well wishes sent from afar when I was getting married, to later comforting me with phone calls when my marriage was ending. Thank you for sharing poetry...from the writings of a 16 year old boy to a grown man in his 40s, excited over having one published. Thank you for wanting me to know you had become a man of faith, when you weren't even sure God existed when we were young. Thank you for sharing tips on how to lose weight as we both talked about mid life weight gains and health worries. Thank you for for making amends. Thank you for accepting mine. Thank you for taking the time to reconnect. Thank you for making me laugh when I wanted to cry. Thank you for calling me once when YOU needed to cry, and you did. Thank you for most recently helping me rebuild self esteem which I had seemed to lose. Thank you for my cup of coffee and the hug in June. Thank you for my lava rock.