Said good bye in person to my old friend Jimi last night at a nearby Keg. Five family members and four friends came together to do so. Jimi's been my best friend for over 50 years.
So we drank, cried and laughed as people do at such affairs, the first such one I have attended in advance of a medically assisted death - a brave and proper choice on his part.
My friendship with Jimi began due to our shared love of table hockey and sports generally. Jimi would go on to star in Whalley Little League (the junk his father taught him to throw came in handy there) and high school basketball where he was a star junior varsity player and varsity mainstay until it was discovered how fucking much liquor he had brought along on a road trip to Kamloops.
Someone has to cause trouble in this world.
Many injurious camping trips, ball hockey brawls, slo-pitch benders, weddings, stags, motorcycle rides, Super Bowl and Grey Cup parties and punk rock shows lit up our young lives. In middle life Jimi joined my partner Sonja and I frequently in Mexico, the local standardbred track and too many barbeques, birthday bashes and celebrations of life to recall.
We were two very different cats. Me the lefty, Jimi the righty. Bookish me and street smart Jimi. We were united by two things however: our love of West Ham United and our hatred of the Vancouver Canucks. He may be making his exit just before the Canucks give their fans one more opportunity to riot like it is 1994.
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