Love, Loss, and Friendship
My Thoughts About Danny
A little over eight years ago, I lost one of my greatest mentors and a man I looked up to with so much reverence and respect. I used to call him “sir,” but I think by now enough time has passed where “TK” would be cool with me calling him by his nickname. That was my first visceral experience with the idea of sudden, unexpected death. We all lose loved ones, but when they’re young, when you least expect it, when you live every day as if you’re just going to see that person again in the future… that’s the gut punch. The shock and awe. Still, when we lost TK, the reality set in pretty quick. I wasn’t really in denial. I got some friends together that knew him, and we reminisced and shared stories about what he meant to us. I’ve visited him several times since.
This time — with Danny — it was different. He didn’t reply to my text last Wednesday. I found out why about an hour later. I hung up the phone, wiped the tears off my face and went back to work. I pushed it out of my mind immediately, almost to the point of being in denial that it occurred. I mean, I had just video chat with him four days ago. As if there could be some mistake and a reality existed where everything was still fine.
Well, I’ve got work to do today. I’ll deal with this later.
“Dealing” with it meant thinking about Dan’s stupid laugh. It meant considering Dan’s irrational love for baseball, and wonder “who’s gonna wish me a happy Bobby Bonilla Day this year?” It meant finding the polaroids of Dan attempting to make — and severely underbaking — the brownies he sent to me while I was deployed. Just because Dan was that freaking cool and that much of a friend. Because he was that selfless and considerate and thoughtful and caring. It meant really looking at those photos through tears in my eyes, confronting the loss of someone I knew to be so incredibly good at their core.
People have layers, and we don’t always let others see the core of us. Friendships are funny in that we often bond over dumb, superficial, outside layer things. Maybe you share an office space with that person, or grew up near each other, or share a favorite band. I first met Dan 11 years ago. And for a long time, my friendship Dan was just us talking about, watching, and playing sports together. Then we’d send each other care packages with sports stuff to remind us of home on deployment (I sent him that Jets sign in the photos above when he was in Afghanistan). And then somewhere along the line we’d stop talking about how bad the Mets’ starting rotation was for five minutes and have a real conversation about “inner-layer” stuff.
The last time I got to see Dan was in August of last year. We discussed all the things you’re not supposed to talk about at work or maybe even at a Thanksgiving dinner table. Race, religion, politics, family, relationships. Nothing was off the table. I’m so thankful for those moments. I’m so thankful that somewhere in our friendship we took a chance on being vulnerable enough to talk about “hard” topics. I’m honored that Dan let me see who he was at his core.
After TK died, one of his friends and another mentor of mine reached out and told me that we all need to do a better job of telling our friends that we love them. He and TK would write each other notes of encouragement and truly express how much they cared for one another. Maybe its fake machismo garbage, but I think men are particularly bad at this. The English language has one word, “love” for a bunch of different meanings. I love donuts, I love my son, and I love my wife… all in very different ways.
Normalize saying “I love you” to your friends. As I look at those polaroids or flip through vivid memories in my mind like the pages of a photo album, the greatest consolation I have is that I know he cared about me, and I know he knew I cared about him. Because when he remembered to call me on my 30th birthday a couple weeks ago (again, that’s the kind of guy he was), I told him so. It doesn’t make it all OK. I’m still confused. I’m still angry. I don’t know if/when the tears will stop. But that knowledge brings a smile through the tears when I look at photos, and a certain small comfort I can’t put into words.