"You've never been anywhere, have you ahss-hole?"

Death is a strange and difficult thing to deal with for everyone. One perspective I recall reading is that death is the only supernatural event with which everyone has experience. We all lose someone at some point in our lives; we all have to come to grips with a life, a soul, leaving forever.

I've been fortunate in that I really haven't had too much loss in my life. My parents and siblings are all still alive. I even have one surviving grandparent, which is remarkable for a forty-year-old. My family just celebrated my paternal grandmother's ninetieth birthday two weeks ago. My only experience with the unexpected loss of a close family member was the sudden death of my aunt at the age of fifty.

Last week, though, my close friend's father passed away. Adam and I have known each other since we were fifteen, and I spent a lot of time at his house. His father was a friend to me, too. In fact both his parents were. I always felt that they were the kind of people who were a phone call away if I ever needed them. They were nice enough to open their house to our band and let us rehearse there for years, and made us feel welcome every single time we showed up.

Freeman was a teacher and a raconteur, and he loved the sound of his own voice - but with good reason. He was the most successful debate coach Melrose High School ever had (and ever will have), and had a love of American history that infected those around him (at least it did me). He also had a bizarre, absurdist side that came, I think, from not being afraid to be unusual or conspicuous. Every group of friends has "in" jokes; sayings, quotes from movies, Freudian slips that came out at just the right time. The jokes among me and my band mates, who were exposed to Freem on a regular basis, are filled with "Freem-isms." After dinner one night, Sally announced that she had made coffee jell-o for dessert. I'd never had coffee jell-o (I didn't even know it came in that flavor) and said as much. Freem looked at me as if I had just said "Really, the Pope isn't a Methodist?" and exclaimed "Never had coffee jell-o? You've never been anywhere, have you ahss-hole!?" He was forever calling me an ahss-hole and a horse's ahss and (my personal favorite) a touch-hole. And always with a great, big smile on his face. Probably the strangest Freem-ism was a complete non sequitur. We were eating pizza and somebody mentioned Taco Bell. Freem was finishing off a bite of pepperoni (his favorite) and with a big grin on his face said, "Taco Bell, mon! My brudder been down dere." !? Whatever he meant, it's a mystery he has taken to his grave.

When I got the news that Freeman had passed away, I was stunned. I hadn't seen him in almost a year, and the last time I saw him he was in relatively good health and spirits. He had had his share of health troubles, but it seemed like things were turning around. But this year wasn't a good one for him, and there were more setbacks than advances. In one sense, I was glad that I had a memory of him frozen in my mind from better times; but that seems almost unfair. The people who meant the most to him had helped him right up to the end, and they couldn't replace the reality with a softened version of the past. He got sick. He got sicker. And he died.

I didn't know what to expect at the wake. To me, this seemed like such an untimely and unfair loss. A man, perhaps old and ill, but still vital, was "suddenly" gone. In my universe, Freem was there one minute, calling me a "horse's ahss" and telling raunchy stories, and gone the next. But when I talked to his sons they told me no, this was expected. Yes, he was still himself right up to the day he died, but he was tired. I got the impression that he went out on his own terms. And at the memorial service the next day, Adam gave the most touching and eloquent eulogy I have ever heard, with equal measures of remorse, respect, irreverence and humor. After that, I heard a story about Freeman's last day from Cal and Adam and it all started to feel like less of a sudden departure.

There are a lot of things I'll miss about Freeman Frank, and I am sure I won't miss him even half as much as his family, but his life was whole and complete. So, really, nothing is "gone." Freem was there, and is there, and will always be there. And I'll always be a horse's ahss.