The Tiny Gifts are Ususally of The Greatest Significance....August 20, 1999

The Tiny Gifts are Ususally of The Greatest Significance....August 20, 1999

I awoke in a rather mirthless mood this morning.

'It is too early for me to be up,' I muttered to myself whilst staggering, scratching, and hacking my way to the potty.

While only thirty, having only a couple hours sleep makes me wake to forboding of middle age. Exacerbating the condition was the realization that I had to be up; my overnight client was already downstairs banging away at nintendo. Who knows how long he had been awake. If rigor mortis has set into one of the pets, I would have a pretty good indication.

I stumbled downstairs, clad in whatever decent clothes I could find on my bedroom floor, and grumbled the best "good morning" he was ever going to hope for from someone who has never been a morning person. I creaked the door open to let the hounds out for their first of the day business, staring in envy of their profound energy as they bound through the grass, staring, too, because I was catatonic. I snapped out of it with the realization that I needed my first coffee of the day. Vices do have their benefits indeed. Coffee on and hounds in, I lowered myself onto the couch, pulled a blanket over me, and hovered in a state of semi-consciousness for the better part of a couple hours. I was robbed of complete unconsciousness with perpetual requests for me to watch him play a stupid video game or make him breakfast (both of which he is capable but unwilling to do himself).

Two hours pass in a painful haze of semi-sleep and squaks for attention. Heaving myself from the couch, I proceeded to pour a cup of now burnt coffee and head upstairs to check my phone messages. I heard a not so subtle "finally" amidst the monotonous, highly annoying video game midi (whose volume kept creeping up and up during my attempt at slumber, come to think of it). It was barely ten o'clock, and already I was both wondering how I was going to get through this day, and wishing it were already over. Damn vacation time. Damn it to hell. It makes it so difficult to get back into tedious routine.

Lowlandz called me this morning, I came to find out. Initially, my day was made in hearing his voice, but with a rare urgent tone to the message, asking me to please call him back, I thought my day was perhaps going to get worse.

"Consistency is the key...." Sipping the bitter brewed java, lighting a composing smoke, I called Lowlandz back.

"Hi, Low," High greeted.

"'Lo, High," Low returned.

Allow me to preface our conversation just a bit. Lowlandz has a younger sister, who got married just this summer, and recently discovered she is pregnant. She has had the rare privilage of experiencing a relationship with someone since her childhood, parallel to that of her brother and me.

Lowlandz conveyed to me this morning the tragic, and seemingly unnecessary death of his sister's best friend. She died due to complications stemming from a blood clot in her leg, a diagnosis missed by her doctor when she complained initially of a problem. She was in her early twenties. Low's sister is understandably devastated beyond the comprehension of most. She is becoming physically ill as a result, and there is much concern for her welfare and the baby's.

Nevertheless, this was not the nature of the urgency in his voice. The incident reminded him both of the frailty of life, he told me, and the esteem of our relationship. In light of this, he called, he said, just to hear the sound of my voice, and to express to me how he would feel if were me that died suddenly.

I was moved beyond anything I could articulate. All I could do, seemingly, was to stutter and mumble my way through a "ditto". While so important, it is so rare and scary for a man to be emotive, and I am tremendously blessed with a best friend who has the courage to be when it is most important, and most needed.

Alas, the call did not make my day.

It made my milennium.

....Blessed Be