Sadness

I lost a dear friend this weekend.

Fred was one of the kindest, gentlest men that I had the privilege to know. Family was always first for him. I never saw him mad or upset, even when things went wrong. He would just shrug his shoulders and fix whatever needed to be fixed.

Fred and Cathy didn’t discipline their kids as most parents did. A broken window, or messy rooms, or crashing the car into the house all got the same level of conversation. Because they believed that even though you taught your children right from wrong, that sometimes things just happened, despite all of the best precautions. Their favorite saying: “shit happens”.

His favorite food was fast food hamburgers. He loved them, would rather eat them than the delicious dinner that Cathy cooked. He loved football, High School, College and NFL., he watched it all. His four boys all played baseball so he got involved by being an umpire. Cathy refused to watch baseball with him after that, because he would get so mad at the umpire’s “bad decisions”.

Fred worked a lot of different jobs in his life. His last job was pest control along with doing restaurant inspections for the state. You would think that seeing restaurant kitchens would stop him from eating fast food, but it didn’t. He did however, refuse to ever eat at a chinese restaurant.

I lost a dear friend this weekend and the world is a sadder place.