Nobody will understand this entry better than most of you. In our own odd little ways we have forged friendships and much more through this medium that non-blogger type people do not and will not understand. I know many of us have already mentioned this like this.

So, here I am.

Sad beyond belief…

I can’t sleep because I just want to cry…

It’s the middle of the night and the one person that wouldn’t get cranky by a middle of the night phone call from me for no particular reason isn’t going to answer. Sure, there are others I could call, but some would be a mite irritated about the time, others wouldn’t get what I’m feeling. This one person wouldn’t question. He’d just listen to me cry and let me get it all out. After that, he’d find something to say to make me laugh.

I cannot call him tonight or any other night…

He’s why I’m so sad…

A couple of you might remember him. He really didn’t blog at efx2 very often and he never wrote anything here; he signed up there to write a few entries here and there because I nagged him to do it.

He registered here and efx2 as leduntitled. I just called him “Led”.

I had this phone call from a number I didn’t recognize. I didn’t answer the phone. Instead I listened to the voice message from a person I didn’t know. It simply said “I’m L…, a friend of Ed’s. Could you please call me?”

I knew.

I didn’t want to make that call, but I had to.

He died last weekend.

His friends hunted and searched for my phone number because they knew how close he and I were. They knew I needed to know. They invited me to come and stay with them so I could attend his memorial service. They seem wonderful. I’m glad he had them in his life.

Sadly, I knew this call would come. I just hoped it wouldn’t be so soon.

He’s had health problems for the past few years. I’ve known that, but he didn’t complain and tended to try to shove the seriousness of his illness in the background. He always told me he didn’t want me to worry.

Our friendship has spanned years and years. Once upon a time, I wandered into some silly chatroom and met this guy. He was sarcastic, odd, funny, intelligent, sweet, and silly. We hit it off immediately and began to spend hours and hours talking.

No matter what happened in his life or mine, we stayed friends. There were some ups and downs, just like in any friendship. There were times that I wanted to smack him silly, and I’m sure there were times he felt the same way about me.

He was a computer savy tech geek who rolled his eyes when I admitted I didn’t know how to copy and paste. He patiently taught me how to navigate the net and do all kinds of funky things with a computer.

He forgave me when I wasn’t a very good friend to him. He’d tell me if I was being an idiot, but never did he stop being there for me.

Before there were inexpensive cell phones everywhere (yes, we have been friends long), he got an 800 number in case I wanted to call him – any time, anywhere.

When things were crappy in my life, he listened and cared.

When shit hit the fan in his life, I listened and cared.

I was married with kids; he’d never married and had no children. Even so, he seemed to love when I babbled on about the goofy things my kids did. He asked about them all the time. When he was in a relationship, he’d use me as a soundingboard when his g/f was driving him nuts.

He was just always there.

Several years ago, everyone in my immediate family forgot my birthday. He didn’t. He put together a silly birthday website to make me laugh. He was so angry that I’d been forgotten here that he made a point of always making sure that never happened again. My birthday is Monday. It will be the first time in thirteen years that I won’t hear from him.

I hated knowing he was so sick. I hated even thinking about the possibility that he wouldn’t be there some day. I tend to shove bad things into the background. I tend to try to avoid the ugly parts of the world. I ignored that I might lose him.

In doing so, I haven’t been the best friend to him lately.

I wasn’t blogging here, you know that – I also wasn’t being very good about talking to him as much as we did in the past. I haven’t had any contact with him in over a week.

I keep going back to last year when he was really feeling sick. I demanded he go to the hospital and threatened to call his mom, his friends, etc. if he didn’t go. He went and his doc told him he’d have died if he didn’t get in when he did. Now, I am thinking that maybe if I’d talked to him last week, I would have realized he needed to see a doc again; he was terrible about doing things like that.

In any case, there is a hole in my world right now and I just needed to talk it out. Like I said, you peeps – you people understand how much we can learn to care for someone online. Truly, none of my friends that don’t go online would understand how I’m feeling – they would think I’m nuts.

Bear with me for a bit. I have a feeling I may be writing about this again one of these days.

Thanks

Peace