Death

How can someone you love just not exist anymore.  Bigger and louder than life and poof - not there any more.  I can look at a doorway and imagine him walking through it but he won't ever again.  This man didn't even sneeze like a normal person.  His sneeze could blow out the eardrums of a passing person.  Okay, maybe just a tad bit of exaggeration but he never did anything in a small way.

One day we were at his mother's apartment and he went to the bathroom.  Guess he was constipated 'cause he was moaning and groaning and making all kinds of noise.  His mother looked at me and asked if he was always like that.  Hell, I'm cracking up just thinking about it.  The look on her face and the way she tried to be tactful and ask me basically "what the hell is happening?".  I bet her neighbors had lots to talk about in the next few days.  I had never ever heard him be so loud in the bathroom.  Heck, I don't think I have ever heard anyone be so loud in the bathroom and I think I can say the same for his mother. 

He just couldn't do anything half-assed and he never heard about "suffering in silence".  When he didn't feel well, he moaned and groaned and left no doubt that he didn't feel well.  One day I found him on the stairs and he was moaning.  I asked what was wrong and he said "nothing" and kept moaning.  Got him some glucose tablets and he came around and had no idea what he had been doing on the stairs.  Cracked up when I told him what had happened.

He was 6'2" of big baby when he wanted to be and sometimes when he wasn't thinking about it at all.  He just wanted to be babied when he wanted - and it wasn't to difficult to tell when.  Moaning, groaning, being a pain - he wanted to be babied.