I know you don’t mean it that way, but you probably should be aware of this.
I’m so sorry for your loss.
Darren, your own cite says triple parentheses and he used five.
Rockin’ thread title. Not sure how much of this is Miller’s doing.
To all, I appreciate the kind words, the last few days have been a bit hard on me. I did not make this thread asking for sympathy, but I do appreciate knowing that there are those out there, who barely know me, who still are willing to keep me in their thoughts.
We had plans to go see Justice League on monday (I’m not a huge fan of DC movies, but he liked 'em, so it was fun), but he cancelled to say he wasn’t feeling well. I checked up on him a couple of times, and didn’t hear anything back until I got a text from his brother friday morning telling me the news. It really didn’t even hit me yet. I just read the text… “This is ___, ___'s Brother. He passed away yesterday.” Saw it when I got up in the morning. Took a shower, drove in to work, and was setting up the grooming room when the impact of those words finally hit home fully. I actually collapsed for a bit on the floor, not even able to control myself enough to sit up. Fortunately, I get in an hour before employees or clients, so I was able to compose myself enough not to terrify them, though I had many ask if something was wrong. I avoided clients for the most part, putting my sister and an employee in charge of reception while I went back and washed some dogs.
It was while I was covering the front for a bit that I habitually typed in the “str” key combo that gets me to my user CP, and realized I had no interest at all in participating in any threads, so I opened up a pit thread to try to get some emotion off my chest. I stared at the screen for a bit, then quickly just typed out those lines and hit “submit” through watering eyes.
I went out last night with a bunch of his friends. Nearly all of them I know, but a few I haven’t seen in years, and it was the first time we’d all been together in over a decade. We told some stories, we did some crying, quite a bit of weed was smoked, (I haven’t really partaken since my early 20’s, so that kicked my ass), and generally had a bit of an informal wake. His family is from california, so they’ve already taken him out there and will hold the funeral there, so that’s about what we get to memorialize him.
So, no real chance for a eulogy, but I thought I’d share some of my thoughts and memories here.
I first met him when I was working in a hotel kitchen. He was on days, I was on nights, and he would be leaving as I got there. Any of you that have ever worked food service know that there is generally a rivalry between day and night shifts. Day shift always burns all the labor, and leaves the place a mess for night to clean up. I usually worked the shift alone, which was a bit annoying, as some of the things I was doing was also attracting a bunch of business, and I was starting to get swamped when we got busy.
So, one day, he walks up to me, and asks, “What do you want me to do?” I am thinking that finally someone on day shift was going to stick around and clean up their mess, so I had him clean the slicer, the prep tables, and sweep out the walk in. When he was done, he asked what else, and I said that was good, and sent him home. We went through this the next day as well, but on the third day, he gets angry with me.
Little did I know that our chef had actually reassigned him to night shift, and he was actually there to work with me, so he was getting there the same time I was, and I was giving him an hour’s worth of work and sending him home.
So, great, I have a helper. What can he do? Well, he can do breakfast and pizza. Doesn’t really know how to cook anything. I trained him on pantry (cold stuff, sandwiches, salads, deserts and the like), as that was easy to show him, and it was really the part I hated the most. Very time consuming, and you could only really do one thing at a time, unlike the rest of the line where I could multitask more effectively.
He did very well with this, and the salads and sandwiches he sent out looked far better than anything I ever cared to put together. I started having him finish my plate presentations, and with just a couple movements of some garnishes, could make the whole plate pop.
Still couldn’t cook. Started training him on grill, and while I can just look at a steak and know its temperature, and if I am in doubt, can touch one to be sure, by the time he was done with a steak, it looked like it lost a fight with a hedgehog, as much as he had stabbed it with his bi-therm.
As we worked together, we kept increasing our business. We had a couple of high end restaurants nearby that people couldn’t get into, often times even with a reservation it would be an hour or more wait, so they’d start coming over to the hotel to go to the bar, then get sucked in by my menu or daily feature. Then they would come back and tell their friends.
After a year, the hotel restaurant went from being a convenience for guests with 20 or so covers a night, to an actual destination restaurant where we were doing a couple hundred covers. I’m a good cook and can build a great flavor profile, but I credit much of that to his presentations.
I introduced him to Firefly, before it even came out on DVD (I’d taped the episodes), and we went opening night to see Serenity. We actually just left the kitchen a total wreck, went to the movie, and came back and cleaned up afterwords. That was our show, so much so, that we ended up starting a RGP based on the series that kept going until just a few years ago.
I moved on a bit, I have issues staying in one job too long, and set out looking for something else that would be challenging to me, and he went on to culinary school, which I have been to, but never managed to finish.
He got his degree, and started getting jobs as a chef, I even ended up working for him for a little while, an interesting change of dynamics. I apologized to him once that I was proud of him, in that I trained him from the ground up, but he made good on the training and even surpassed me in most ways.
He would still come to me for menu advice and we would get together either in my kitchen, or sometimes a kitchen he was working in, and just spend hours experimenting with food.
We’ve both been busy people, and there’s been a few years that we probably only managed to get together a handful of times, but we always knew that that we were there for eachother. The last few years, we have both had mondays off, so that’s been our day. Not every single week, but most weeks, he’d come by, we’d chat, watch some TV, practice some cooking skills, and just hang out for a bit. Sometimes he just stopped by for a few minutes on his way elsewhere, and some days, he would be there pretty much all day.
I’m not a big movie person, but he is, so we started going to movies on a fairly regular basis. Last one we went to was Thor, which I actually ended up enjoying more than he did (but I don’t pay as much attention to hype, so he had higher expectations than I did.)
When he texted me on Monday, telling me he wasn’t feeling well, I was actually slightly relieved. I wasn’t all that gung-ho on seeing justice league, and I actually had quite a bit to get done that day, so I just texted back “k, get better”, which is the last text of mine that he read.
When I hadn’t heard back from him by wednesday, I sent “Feeling better?”, but unknown to me, at that time, he was in the hospital, and not feeling better. Thursday, I sent “I’m starting to get a bit worried, you OK?”. Which was responded to early the next morning by his brother.
He was one of the best people I have ever known. He was always happy and smiling, always met everything with a laugh. He was a hugger, and though I’m not a fan of physical contact, I was not excepted from his hugging. I am at least happy to say that the last time I saw him, we hugged before he left.
Reading over this, I don’t think it quite does him justice. But it’s a start.
TL;DR: I miss my friend, and the world is infinitely impoverished by his loss. Be sure not to take your friends for granted, as you never know when is the last you will see of them.
Thanks, I put it here because I thought I had more to say, and thought I was going to be more profane, but that’s all I really managed.
Thank you for sharing more. {{{hugs}}}
Very sorry to hear about your loss. And so sorry you weren’t able to say goodbye. I hope you are able to get through the grieving process-- I know how tough that can be.