24 years

Tomorrow will be 24 years. The hurt isn't as intense as it once was. I tried to reread my story of that day. I had to stop when it got near the end and finish it later. 24 years is a long time to hold pain. I know he is happy. I think we hold the pain to show we still care? I don't know? It's weird to miss somebody and the relationship you had even though knowing full well the relationship would be different now. Tomorrow I will buy ice tea and pretzel rods and remember my dear friend who taught me so much. He wasn't perfect, but I was blessed to have known him. He will always be a part of who I am. RIP Tim.

Picture posted by Tim's Sister Robin on Facebook saying "Miss you everyday, Timothy"

Tim "leaking"

I believe this is a random honeymoon picture.
Just another example of the kind of fun Tim was.

Tim and Rachael

This is a picture of Tim and my niece/his daughter Rachael.

Tim and Sis in Poconos

This is a picture of my sister and Tim on their honeymoon in the Poconos. Which is where Amber and I happened to go for our honeymoon. I think they roughed it in a little cabin. Amber and I stayed at a resort with our own pool and jacuzzi. :-)

New Pictures of Tim

I managed to get a bunch of pictures of Tim in digital format...I will begin to post them one by one. I will try to relay what I know about the picture. I feel saddened that I find it hard to remember him as well I once did.


This is him and my sister...obviously on their wedding day.

Tim's Birthday

Today Tim would have been 43. I still think of you and miss you my friend. Happy Birthday.

Guns and Yarn

Tim bought Lee and I little plastic pellet guns. We use to have gun fights in their (Tim and Kay Lynn) basement from time to time and spent more time trying to find the yellow pellets in the light orange shag carpet of their basement. So one day while Tim was at work Lee and I found a whole roll of yarn. And with my sister's permission we proceeded to make a web of yarn from the railing to the wall of the stairs coming down to the basement. In the middle of the web we tied up his gun and his extra pellets. Then laid in waiting as he tried to make his way down.

Now most people would have seen the obvious trap and not come down. Not Tim, he charged full steam ahead trying his best at first to try to weave his way through, while trying to dodge a barrage of pellets and trying to get his gun and pellets untied to defend himself. Eventually he had to just rip through our taped up yarn and the mayhem continued.

Just another typical day of fun with Tim.

Tim

He was a husband, father, uncle, brother, brother-in-law, and a best friend.

The farmer's field, picnic in a tree

I spent two summers with Tim and my sister, Kay Lynn, in Iowa. One of those two summers Tim, a friend of theirs little brother, and I took a lunch out to a local farmer's field. The field had a pond, some cows, and some big trees. We found a tree with a branch wide enough for us to climb up to and eat our lunch on. It took all of 10 minutes for us to eat and leave. But I've always remembered eating my lunch in a tree. It was just another really cool day with Tim.

There was another summer that my best friend and Tim's nephew Lee was out there with us. We also took a trip out to the field. We mocked Star Trek a little and pretended to be Spock, Kirk and Bones trying to figure out the strange life forms were with big black spots and eating grass. On the way home Tim put us to the test. What if he had gone blind? Could we get ourselves home since he was the one who we followed out there not really paying attention to landmarks on the way there? I was able to remember that the sun set behind their house and so began to head toward the setting sun. We had to separate the barbed wire fence to lead him through with his eyes closed and managed to find our way home. How easy it is to entertain 12 year old boys.

That same summer we had found a vine hanging from a tree at the top of a long sloping hill. We found we could swing out and be about 10 feet in the air and swing back safely to level ground. As we used it through out the summer it gave more creaks as if it was going to give out. Tim decided to test it deciding if it could still hold him it would continue to hold us. Of course at about the highest point of the swing it could indeed no longer held him. He gracefully dropped to the ground and walked back up the and hill and proclaimed, yep it's not going to hold anymore.

Dragon Raid

We use to stay up to the wee hours of the morning playing Dragon Raid. It was a Christian form of D&D. There were no demons or devils. Dragons were often fought through intellect and quoting scripture. It really was a lot of fun. The scripture and slower parts were only at the end of a long campaign and were usually a small part of the whole game but the important part. So anyway all that to tell some funny stories from our gaming with Tim.

There was this one time when Tim rolled his 4 sided die for damage. You read a 4 sided die by the number that is on the bottom of all three visible sides. Tim said he had rolled a 4, Lee and I said no it was a 3. Repeat for about 30 seconds. Finally we realized the die had two 4's and one 3 on the bottom. And there was another side where there were two 3's and one 4. It was quite funny to watch 3 people all sure that they were correct yet thought the other was wrong and yet all were correct.

Just some other random memories of food we ate while playing are ice tea, cheddar and sour cream chips, doritos, jalapeno cheddar dip, pretzel rods and chocolate pudding.

Batman and Robin

One of my earliest memories of hanging out with Tim as young teenager was playing Batman and Robin in his big black car. I don't remember what the make and model was but it did kind of look like the Batmobile. We had all kinds of imaginary weapons on the dash board to take out the enemies.

It was a theme we included through out the years. Once, he started to drive away slowly as Lee was getting in his car, (the rabbit, not the big black one) so he could feel like Robin while jumping in a moving vehicle. Except Robin never loss balance because of an unexpected moving vehicle and bonked himself in the head with the door.

Then there was the morning that Lee and I had spent the weekend with Tim and my sister (a very common thing) and Tim was driving us to school and we were stuck behind a slow moving vehicle. Tim asked Lee to fire the missile launchers at him. Lee lowered the glove compartment door and used it as his keyboard. He made a series of beeps and bloops and hit a "fire" button. Tim then noted he would have the same code for a chocolate shake. So Lee lowered the door again made the identical beeps and bloops and then offered Tim his chocolate shake. Tim simply responded "Touché".

September 23, 1989

That was the fateful date. It was a Saturday. They were having a baby shower at my house that day. The women were cooking, cleaning, and decorating in pink. (Must have been a girl.) Like most weekends Tim, myself and his nephew, Lee, (also a best friend) were hanging out together.

The house was filled with too much estrogen for us, so it was time to hit the road. We loaded up into his red VW Rabbit. (The same one we rode in a month and a half earlier to drop Lee and I off at the house we were leaving, to take my sister to the hospital, to give birth to my nephew Seth. At like 6 am by they way.) So we are loaded up in the Rabbit that we have taken on many weekend adventures in the past. Unlike most of those adventures, this day Tim chose to bring his 3 year old daughter, my niece, Rachael with us.

First stop was to go pick up his other nephew Danny, Lee's cousin. From there we roamed around back roads for awhile trying to guess which way he was going to turn next at each intersection. After a lot of turns we found ourselves at the beach, Bethany Beach, DE.

We went strolling along the beach picking up sea shells and the sort. We walked for about a mile till we got to a long jetty made out of some very dark colored rocks. Rachael was getting tired of walking so Tim put her on his shoulders and carried her for awhile. We walked back in the other direction until we came to an old wooden boat that was abandoned on the beach. It looked as if it had been scavenged for firewood. I later went back and took a picture of it, I will try to post it sometime.

Well after we felt we had wasted an appropriate amount of time we headed back to my house. Well things were winding down there so we headed to the confides of my room to plan out the rest of our night. Being a big Jean Claude fan (he had done only good movies like Bloodsport by that time) Tim tried to call the local video rental store to see if Cyborg was in. Unfortunately it was not.

In the mean time Danny and Lee had noticed that there was a huge sand and gravel pit a short walk through the field behind my house. They came in and convinced Tim and I to go check it out. So we took the trek back to the pit. We found plenty to do. Skipping rocks across the standing water. Find the biggest rocks we could to make the biggest PLUNK we could. Then we found these huge weeds that when you pulled out of the ground work well as spears. One of my favorite memories from that day was when I finally got one up on Tim. I saw him duck up a side of the pit wall to sneak attack me as I came by. So I climbed to the top of the hill and found him from behind poised to "spear" me as I came by. Instead I managed to "spear" him and give him the surprise attack.

Well then the wind began to pick up and it started to get cold. We found that if we stood in the crevices of the washouts that they would give us cover from the wind. We then began to make them bigger and start tunneling them out. Lee was in one and Tim was in another trying to work them together. I took over for Tim for awhile to give him a break. Danny was still with us he was working on one of his own in anther location. After about 5 minutes or so of digging Tim came back to take over for me again. I backed my way out of the tunnel and out and let him in. We were about half way up the side of the pit wall and I took a big leap into a pile of dirt at the bottom. Just after I landed and got my footing again I turned around to see how the guys were doing. It was at that time the tunnel Tim was in collapsed on him.

I scrambled up the hill as fast as I could and began yelling for Lee and Danny to come out. They both showed up almost instantly and the three of us began to dig. We had been digging the whole time with just our hands and that was still all we had to dig with. After about 5 minutes we realized it was going to take a bigger effort than the 3 of us could handle. We were 15, 13 and 13. We agreed that Danny should run to the house for help. I have never talked to Danny about what happened when he went back, all I know is that they made a call to 911.

Lee and I continued to dig with all that we had in us. Just about the time we were out of any energy at all we heard Tim muffle through the dirt. With a new spark of energy and a more exact location of where we thought his head would be so that we could at least get air to him we began digging again. After what seemed like an hour of digging and no help Lee finally heard someone coming. He got up and began to wave them to our location.

At this point the story veers again. Lee brought them to the exact location but the first 3 or 4 guys on the scene had no shovels. So it was more digging with hands for another 10 minutes or so till guys showed up with shovels and helicopter came in to shine some light down. Until they finally got him out and loaded him on the helicopter.

The story veered because by the time the men showed up with Lee I had walked off. I was kind of in a daze. Coming to the realization that he was not going to make it I began to walk to a trailer park on the other side of the field and pit. To this day, I am not sure why I did not just walk back home or stay. I think I didn't stay because I did not want to see him pulled out. The longer it was till I saw him the longer I could deny what was happening I guess.

I knocked on a door of trailer and asked to use their phone. I called my house and a friend of the family who was there came to get me and give me a ride back home. Once home Lee and Danny were there waiting and we huddled and cried for quite awhile. We finally settled down and managed to answer the questions by the 911 officials. My parents had taken my sister and had headed to the hospital.

I called my mom's best friend (who is like a mom to me) and told her all that had happened. She worked for a doctor and assured me he would probably be okay. That they can do a lot in the world of medicine. My spirits were lifted some. My parents finally came back home. I didn't need for them to say the words. The look in their eye told me.

I bolted for my brother's room to get away from everyone. The next couple of hours are hazy. I remember friend's from church there. I remember my brother hugging me. I remember asking my dad for scripture to read and he read a passage of Job to me. Don't ask which one. I don't remember a word of it, just that it did seem to help. That is about the end of what I remember from that day.

I thank God that on his last day on Earth I was able to spend it with him and that we that we had so much fun. I am thankful that he was able to spend the day with his daughter. I feel bad often that he did not spend much time with my sister that day and that he only ever had about 50 days to spend with his son. I try my best to tell the stories of Tim to Seth. To remind him of what a great dad he had and to be as good of a friend to him as Tim was to me. I cannot replace him, but I can remember him.

Introduction

In my list of 100 things about me I mentioned that I lost my best friend when I was 15. One of my fellow bloggers asked to hear more about that story. So since stories about my best friend I have had, Tim, doesn't really fit with the flow of my other blog I have decided to start this blog. A blog where I cannot only tell the story of how I lost him but tell stories to help ME remember those times.