No…no…no

I’m beginning to think that I should stop travelling in in July. Last year I went on vacation and came back to 3 deaths. This year I went home for my 30 year reunion from high school and 4 days after returning, I learnt of the devastating news that a friend was killed in a motorcycle accident that morning. A car turned into his path and he died from his injuries. I’ve since heard that apparently the driver was arrested.

Shurlan was not someone with whom I spoke regularly, but he was one of those people I knew I could reach out to in certain situations and I could trust that he would steer me right. We didn’t see each other often but when we did it was genuine happiness on both sides. We actually grew up a street apart in the same neighbourhood but he was younger than I so I barely remember him from there. Our mothers played hockey together and to me that’s how we knew each other.  He moved to Atlanta in the early 2000s (I think) and it was right here that he died. He was a man on his own beat. One of the things I always admired about him was that he always did his own thing and he didn’t seem to give a fcuk what anybody thought about him. He did his thing and marched to his own drum…in the words of another friend “he had a flare about him for the wild side” and another, “all the tings I was too scared or self conscious to do, Shurl do”. Lol that really sums him up nicely. He was a genuine character who told it as he saw it and kept it real and I’ve heard that sentiment iterated by so many people within the last couple days.

its an odd thing for me. As soon as I turned 40, I began thinking about death more than I’d like to admit to the point that I remember having a stern conversation with myself and said, “SELF. U really need to stop with this shit. Next thing u know, u call it on urself! stop it!!”…I don’t do it as much these days but anytime one of my peers/friends/someone close dies, I think about my own mortality and I always think about their last moments…were they in pain? Did they know what was happening? Were they even awake and cognizant at the time? I can’t help it. At risk of sounding very cliched, we really must live like there’s no tomorrow. I think this is worth reposting:

This is my favourite picture of Shurlan that I’ve seen floating around Facebook. Goodbye my friend, u’ll be missed by many. It appears that he was in a motorcycle club and I pulled it down from one of their posts.