Author: Fred Blahnik

Best Friend Ever

By Frederick J. Blahnik

God, how I’m gonna miss him when he’s gone!!!

Miss ‘im, miss ‘im,  MISS ‘IM!!!!!

Impossible to fathom.  Impossible to comprehend.  Impossible to even imagine right now…..

He’s undoubtedly been my best friend  for, like…..for, like…..FOREVER!!!!!

                My gosh, when I stop to think about all the glorious things we’ve done together over the years, just me and him, well…..my heart starts pounding and my eyes begin to tear up!  Jeff has been more dependable and more loyal and more trustworthy than any friend I’ve ever had, and that’s saying quite a lot too.  Yet it’s the truth, absolutely the truth!  Whenever I needed a calming presence to settle my nerves or a shoulder to cry on when I was feeling downcast or a free ear to patiently listen to my litany of complaints at the end of a stressful day, Jeff was unfailingly there for me.  Always my welfare first, never his.  Always faithfully following just to my stern, never pompously leading just to my bow.  Always the allegiant wing-man, never insisting on being bombastic Maverick.  Always me, never him.  Just a gem of a friend, the true embodiment of a dependable companion.  Jeff would literally do anything for me and not stop for even one second to consider its inconvenience or potential dangers involved. 

Let’s face it:  I love him, I love him a lot; I really really do!!

                My oh my oh my, the innumerable great times we’ve spent together over the years!  Those times can never be edited or reconfigured or replaced…..

                Yeah, just the two of us, me and Jeff.

                Connected by an invisible tether for all eternity.

                But why am I telling you this now and spilling my guts out to someone I can only reach coldly and impersonally through an electronic keyboard?

                Because tomorrow it all comes to an end for the two of us…..

                Yes, that aforementioned transcendent, decade-and-a-half-long relationship will be coming to an end in the space of just one grievous, compacted day on the calendar.

                In one tragic, unimaginably sad morning, to be more precise.

                And I just can’t stand to think about it right now; the thought is hideous; the thought is overbearing; the thought is incomprehensible!

                You see, Jeff is going to be euthanized at 9:00 tomorrow morning down at the veterinarian’s office.

                WHY?!?!?! 

I can graphically envision the horrified, quizzical expression on your face as you incredulously read the previous sentence.

                Well, as is generally the case, Jeff’s physical decline didn’t just up and happen overnight.  His health has been slowly failing for several years now, but its rate accelerated greatly over the past few months—one could compare it to a giant boulder gathering more and more momentum as it screams down an alpine mountainside and not be too far off the mark.  I kept hoping for the best, kept my head firmly buried in the sand akin to a frightened ostrich, kept turning a blind eye to what must have been plainly obvious to everyone around me:  The fact my beloved dog was now fifteen years of age and his overall health reflected this unalterable fact; it was failing precipitously.  Old age was not just slowly catching up to Jeff; it finally DID catch up to him and in a big way too, and this next thought probably goes without saying but I’ll go ahead and state the obvious anyway and blame it on the emotionally compromised state in which I currently find myself entrapped:  There is no cure for old age—not now, not in the future, and not in some hidden enclave of my wildest, most wishful dreams either.  If only there was, I would gladly flip open my checkbook right this instant and write out a check in any amount just to gainfully extend Jeff’s life.

                But no deal; no such luck…..

                That sort of fantastical stuff only happens in cheesy Hollywood movies that are made for kids.

                Anyway, Jeff’s rapid deterioration in health left me with but two stark choices:  Put an end to his awful suffering right now in a humane manner, or allow him to live out his “natural” life to its predestined conclusion while asking my best friend to endure the godawful spate of physical maladies which have made his existence so miserable and unbearable over the past few months.  And, really, faced with these two clear-cut choices, my decision in the matter wasn’t difficult or time-consuming at all.  I love Jeff unconditionally, and in this instance forcing him to put up with excruciating pain on a full-time basis for weeks or even months on end when the means readily exist to swiftly terminate that pain would be cruel, heinous, and serve no useful purpose.  Euthanizing Jeff is the obvious thing to do as well as the only logical route to pursue. 

But just don’t tell that to my heart!

Oh no, don’t try telling that to my aching, grieving heart right now!!!

Because my heart is busting wide open at the ventricles even as I type this.

Yeah.

                Yeah, it really is and that’s no lie……

So the endgame is here now, I suppose, staring me squarely in the face like a coldblooded killer.  Checkmate is inevitable.  It’s all gonna come to an end for Jeff and, by extension, our cherished relationship tomorrow morning—all of the memories, all of the love, all of the fun times we had together, all of the highly treasured comradeship—and, ironically, that in itself will represent yet another unforgettable memory associated with my irreplaceable canine friend.  But this guaranteed indelible “memory” from tomorrow morning will be diametrically different from all the others. Truly, it will be one I would give anything in the world to stifle and forget, although unfortunately the idiosyncrasies of our Homo sapiens’ memory-making process will undoubtedly render my desire mere wishful thinking.

                Thus I guess I might as well begin emotionally preparing myself for life without…..

                Jeff……Jeff……Jeff will be dead and gone in fewer than twenty four hours now, and those memories—both the overwhelmingly good ones together with that final heinous one—will then be all that remains of my best friend ever.

…..it’s actually plain and simple:  We want builder-uppers on our team, not tearer-downers.  We want uniters, not dividers.  We want people who support their teammates, not undermine them.  We want luscious apples, not rotten ones that contaminate and toxify everything around them. We want good teammates, not shitty ones.  So how do you know if someone is a good teammate?  Quite simple, actually.  Does a person make you feel comfortable when they’re around…..or do they put you on edge?  Do they open their arms to you whenever you’re right…..or merely point an accusatory finger in your direction on those occasions when you are wrong?  Do they galvanize…..or do they habitually rip asunder?  Do they build bridges…..or build walls?  Bad teammates are a malignancy on any team; their negativity and unsavory influence spreads insidiously and ultimately rips a group apart at the seams.  Good teammates uplift their colleague’s spirits; bad teammates work capriciously, albeit maybe not always intentionally, to drag them down.  If you can definitively identify a bad teammate on your cohort—And don’t get me wrong here; it isn’t always as easy as it sounds!!—then kick those assfucks off your squad immediately.  IMMEDIATELY…..did you hear me?!?!  Bad teammates are immanently incorrigible.  Despite periodic protestations of innocence alloyed with feeble apologies—some seemingly sincere, others less so—selfish miscreants can never be permanently reformed.  Irrespective of how much talent they may bring to an endeavor, you are much better off without these proverbial rotten apples contaminating your barrel.  Their continued presence is radioactive and will siphon much-needed energy and enthusiasm from teammates in their immediate vicinity who are otherwise struggling to concentrate and perform well and contribute.  Once again, rid yourself of bad, selfish, finger-pointing colleagues at the first opportunity.  They are a cancer that, left unchecked, will ultimately and most assuredly wind up killing the entire organism—Namely, your carefully constructed team!–regardless of how plainly healthy said organism may have been at the outset…..

…..quiet is the night.  Oh, yes, so very very very quiet!  Totally opposite the day, which is loud and grating and bawdy.  Hubristic and overbearing.  And that is what I love so much about the period of time when the sun is absent from the sky and crickets are chirping in synchrony and most apex predators are on the prowl and diving bats take over the troposphere while their chief prey the repulsive mosquitoes desperately seek refuge from their mammalian nemeses.  The night is ingratiating and a soothing poultice for the human soul, unlike the daylight hours which move much too frenetically and sap one’s patience and energy without consciously trying to.  One can easily lose yourself in the nighttime hours, but never in the day; light trails you everywhere, is indefatigable, and is a notorious tattletale to anyone with a sharp eye and an ear for gossip…..

She honestly believes there is a higher purpose to life than chasing simple pleasures and benignly pursuing happiness.  A greater, nobler purpose for humanity.  A metaphysical calling.  So be it then, but I obviously do not agree with her pretentious assessment.  A higher purpose to life may indeed exist, but so too may UFOs, Dark Matter, and parallel universes to our own.  Which is to say I don’t know for sure and neither does she.  It is all conjecturing, positing, postulating, theorizing, or any other word you can come up with that signifies sophisticated thinking sans any proof to support a point of view.  The whole idea is subjective in nature, thus let’s leave it at that.  But a problem arises when individuals of her ilk vaingloriously attempt to inject objectivity into an innately subjective equation.  The two are obviously not compatible and never have been.  That is wrong and should never be tolerated, yet expecting her to graciously accept this logical explanation would be as futile as trying to fend off an enraged, charging bull elephant with a pea shooter.

…..given the immense, smoldering anger I was feeling deep inside me, I knew I had to move expeditiously to distance myself from the hideous moment with as much speed as I could muster or otherwise I was liable to do or say something rash that I would almost certainly regret later.  What happened has happened and it now resides squarely in the past where it belongs, and the only element of the travesty I can currently control is my reaction to it.  That’s right, I exercise a picayune bit of control over the present and maybe I can wobble the future on its axis a barely discernible speck too, but I definitely command no leverage over the past.  The past is a million ton monolith; it is immovable, implacable, and unalterable.  So just move slowly away from this abominable moment at hand and put a little distance between you and it, Fred, and in time that smoldering anger burning uncontrolled within your breast will start abating before beginning to flicker, thereby signaling its death throes not unlike a campfire left untended overnight.  Only then are you safe, although surely not advised, to look backwards to assess the damage that was inflicted on your person.  Looking backwards is never a good idea, understand, yet this advice comes with a massive caveat:  Gazing into the past is almost instinctual behavior and beyond one’s ability to control……

If you decide to take a “day off” from life, know that you stand in imminent peril of losing that time forever; days are classically precious and irredeemable.  Sand that flows downward through a hourglass doesn’t then magically and in discordance with all the known laws of physics flow back upward through that tiny orifice separating the two glass chambers—the isthmus in this case representing the highly dynamic present, the bottom chamber the past, and the top chamber the pluperfect future which manifests as our remaining time on Earth.  Remember, there are no rainchecks on life.  Once we allow a day to pass, however productive or unproductive the rascal may have been, there is zero chance of returning to that day again in the future.  And of course such is the way things should be.  Appreciate what you have now; don’t struggle maniacally to thwart the advance of time or pompously seek to deposit units of time in a temporal piggybank for future usage.  The Laws of Physics don’t work in this fashion and neither does life.  Celebrate and rejoice in the present for all it’s worth, but understand that once it’s gone it’s gone.  You can’t unscramble an egg, you can’t undo an avalanche after it’s begun, you can’t scrunch a genie back into its host bottle, you cannot reverse the result of oxidation and wish away a roaring fire once a match has been lit, you cannot undo the Big Bang, and you likewise cannot relive events from the past irrespective of desire.  This is not to say you have to make every day that you’re alive a colossal, monumental extravaganza, but I’m merely suggesting that taking any day off completely without attempting a key initiative or a laudable physical action amounts to a giant sham and a shameful waste of time.  There were probably a thousand different ways you could have utilized said time that would have provided you with more overt pleasure than just lying around contemplating what you’re gonna have for supper as you listen to a clock ticking on the wall, but you nonetheless “chose” otherwise.  Granted, the preternatural gift of free will affords everyone such a lifestyle “choice”, but the simple existence of free will surely doesn’t constitute evidence that sloth is a prudent, defensible manner of living.  Water flowing into an ocean can never be undiluted and returned exactly as before to the river wherest it originated, and by the same token days that have sailed by arbitrary benchmarks on the Arrow of Time can never be returned intact to those same benchmarks. The past is immutable; the past is inviolable; the past is fixed in concrete; you cannot go back there unchanged from before.  The present and hopeful future?  Those are different creatures altogether; change is possible and even a suggested course of action for certain people in glaring need of same.

The day is good.  She is not.  Therefore, I will pass on her and opt for the day ahead.  Nothing too profound about this decision, is there?  Fact is, it is one of the easiest I have ever been asked to make.  Feminine wiles are treacherous things and oftentimes hard to resist, but not in this instance.  She is bad news and that will never change.  She was born bad to the bone and her skeleton has remained intact since that tragic day.  But the day ahead is looking good and my outlook on life excepting her is positive, so I will be okay.  Yes, I will be okay and promise to be a responsible steward over the life I have been gifted with so long as she remains apart from my orbit.  Oh, and on a permanent basis too.

…..the deathbed felt cold and sterile to the octogenarian’s hunched back, but she wasn’t living in this particular charmed decade anymore anyway.  Her mind had left her body far behind and she had traveled back some sixty years in time, back to when she was a fetching young ingenue once more and all the talk of the town.  Awe-struck boys within a ten-mile radius beat a path to her doorstep every night of the week and would nearly come to blows as they begged embarrassingly for her indulgences, and not a day went by when she didn’t feel wholly invincible and like the queen of the whole universe.  This sublime happiness the old lady was experiencing while entrapped within a cruel time warp wasn’t some trifling, relative thing either.  Rather, the ravishing debutante from yore knew it to be a permanent fixture written in the stars.  She would always be young and nubile and an irresistible boy magnet in her sclerotic mind, even if her frail body and failing heart and the calendar hanging on one wall of her nursing home room emphatically suggested otherwise…..

In life, everyone is assigned a cross to bear.  The only question then is how big that cross will be and how and when it will manifest.  Some crosses are puny and constructed of toothpicks, others are intermediate in size and fashioned from 2X4 lumber, and the largest crosses are carved crudely from towering, rough-hewn oak trees.  What is the greatest factor that will determine which of the aforementioned crosses will be assigned to you personally?  Typically fate.  That’s right, fate is ordinarily the greatest determinant of the size and nature of the cross you will arbitrarily be assigned to carry upon your back throughout your life on Earth.  Unfair as facial acne, I know, but I’m simply speaking the truth here.  One would like to think that inherent altruism, good will toward others, and philanthropy would play a much larger role in this seminal equation, but sadly and unfortunately they don’t.  The forces of fate preponderantly decide the level of difficulty for the life you are asked to live, and at that point it is entirely up to you as an individual to “man up”, accept this kismet in whatever mood you decide upon, and subsequently soldier forward with the remainder of your life.  Bitching a lot and crying a river will not change your life’s trajectory one iota, but a mindset of total acceptance followed by a grim, steadfast determination to fashion the very best life out of what you have been offered by the forces of destiny WILL undeniably lead to a happier—if not frankly happy—outcome for you.

…..one instant she was alive—laughing, smiling, joking, talking, loving.…living, yes, living life to the fullest!!!…..and then in the next instant she was not.  Just like that.  No advance warning whatsoever.  No premonitions or spirit warnings or anything stereotypical like you always read about in the literature.  No NOTHING, I tell you!  She was here one second and then in the next instant she was gone.  And life, yes, life—that mysterious thing (???) that somehow differentiates us from rocks and houses and fences and swing-sets—disappeared at that moment as well, never to return.  Just went away with no warning and no fanfare.  Like…..Presto Vanish-o!!!  Yes, that slippery little entity we know and worship as life was thereafter gone in a literal heartbeat and the blink of an eye.  So now I ask of you:  How on Earth can one realistically deal with the gut-wrenching suddenness of something happening like that?  Yes, tell me, how can you possibly be expected to rationally cope with a separation that earthshaking and that abrupt?  How can you realistically digest it?  How can you intelligently explain it?  I sure as fuck don’t have any answers for you and I’ll freely admit as much.  Because if I did know how—If I accidentally stumbled upon even a whiff of an explanation for the Mephistophelian turmoil I am presently experiencing—I sure as hell wouldn’t be falling apart at the seams as I sit and write this now……agonizingly wondering why I was put here on Earth in the first place just to stand by powerless and slack-jawed—being forced to witness firsthand an event so viscerally heart-rending and dream-shattering and…..and…..and………utterly nonsensical…..