I learned on Monday that my friend Duke Parrish died [1] from catching up on his wife's MyInstaTikFaceLinkedMePinBookSpaceTokInGramWeTrest feed. He died on October 31^st. Hallowe'en.
He was five days younger than I.
It wasn't a sudden accident or the result of a horrible crime. No. He had a genetic disorder diagnosed way too late and it caught up to him.
I am still processing this.
Outside of family, he was the one friend whom I've known the longest. His parents were friends of my parents. We were born in the same hospital. So I'm sure we met before we could even remember such things.
But my family moved about a lot when I was very young, so I only really remember him when we moved to Brevard [2] when I was five. I recall spending lots of time at his house in Connestee Falls [3], up on a mountain. We would spend hours running around in the forest just outside his house, knee deep in leaves, only to make sure we were back at 4:00 pm sharp, to watch Batman [4] on channel 4 (“Same Bat time! Same Bat channel!”).
Oh, on very rare occasions we would sneak into his older brother's bedroom and peek at his brother's hidden collection of Playboy magazines [5]. As you do.
And I can still taste the Chips Ahoy! cookies [6] we snacked on.
I know we were both sad when my Mom decided to up and move to Florida five years later. And from August of 1979 to December of 2012, when Bunny and I travelled to Brevard for the first of our annual trips, I did not see Duke at all. It was then when we reconnected.
I am sill processing this.
It's one thing when someone way older than you dies. That's expected—the old die eventually. Or if someone with a terminal illness dies, it's usually known in advance. It's not as shocking.
But as I said, Duke was five days younger than I. Then again, it was weird when my “known-him-almost-as-long” friend Hoade became a grandfather. What? Hoade is a month younger than I. And then another friend I've known for over twenty years had a stroke—he's a few months younger than I. And another friend I've know for over twenty years had heart surgery—he's a few months older than I. And yet another friend I've ”known-him-almost-as-long-as-Hoade” is on dialysis.
I'm coming to the horrible realization that I'm not as young as I once was. When did that happen?
I'll miss you Duke.
[3] https://connesteefalls.com/
[4] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0059968/