Goodbye Dear Friend

“I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?”

-Stand by Me

This is a quote that resonates with a lot of people as it seems to be a universal truth.

I like to think of the people I grew up with as friends that held a piece of the jigsaw puzzle that put together the man I am today. Each person who held a piece had a hand in the final product. Even if it was just a small piece, an edge perhaps, if they were in my circle of friends they held pieces integral to this picture being as it sits today.

I look back at those formative years and I may not be cognizant of exactly the interplay that went on from them to me but I do recognize it as familiar. When I see people from my past I have this knowing nod as if to say “Hey it’s you. You, who helped put me together.”

Perhaps that is what they mean in the movie. Perhaps that is why we don’t have friends like that anymore. The picture was eventually finished and became the construct of our very lives. We simply show it around to new suitors as if to say “Hope you like it because basically...it is what it is”.

That is not to say you won’t have great friends later in life. It simple means they aren’t the same kinds.

Some of my closer friends growing up had many many pieces. They helped fill in large gaping holes that were under construction and a work in progress since I took my first steps. These individuals are hallmarks of the life we are living now and will continue to live within us in perpetuity.

I lost such and individual on Tuesday.

We hadn’t connected as much over the past few years as our pictures went in different directions. Life has a way of doing that. Regardless, that young man held so many damn pieces of me his name would’ve been on the box.

For a full decade we were virtually inseparable and he brought vibrance and texture to my otherwise ordinary puzzle. He made me a better man. I challenged him on religion and politics and he countered with character and integrity. Can’t help but feel I was an unfair beneficiary.

Stanley Roy Sinton died Tuesday.

He died from Cancer ...and I can’t help but feel a strange sorrow in losing him forever. I will never again see my friend. I will never again see that little fella with all those familiar puzzle pieces strew about him. And it makes me so very sad.