Some days just don't go the way you expect. Friday night I stayed out too late, which resulted in me not waking up till 10:30 am on Saturday. As I lay there in bed contemplating what I was going to do that day to better enrich my life, I got a phone call. As a result of that call, I found myself immediately having lunch with the most beautiful woman whose company I relish. We had a very nice chat over a light meal and resolved to do it again soon. That alone makes the day difficult to improve upon but, in my typical fashion, I pressed on to make this day, or rest of it, a memorable one.

I tidied up my house and meet with friends down at Tapas Estrella for dinner. (another social function brought to me by meetin.org). Although the rest rallied on to a live concert after dinner, I headed home to kick back and relax. It had been such a pleasant day. Everyone should be so lucky.

When you consider the madness of our modern lifestyles, the demands of work and family, it's easy to lose sight and forget to simply enjoy yourself, if even for only on day..

As Dave Chappelle would say while mimicking Rick James: "It's a Celebration, bitches!". Well, it turned out that all celebrations, they inevitably come to an end, and often, a shockingly abrupt one at that. Upon my return home I was greeted with the news that my longtime friend Nate Jones took his own life earlier in the day.

This was just too unbelievable. In my absolute shock and bitter denial, I actually texted him a message to call me. This simply could not be true. Nate is about the most upbeat person you will ever meet. Suicide? This has to be some sort of bad joke.

He and I had been scheming for months to start a race team of old and obsolete riders to go down to Miller Motorsports Raceway in Utah to show those young whippersnappers that their new fancy bikes don't make them any faster. I had just talked to him before Christmas about getting together at my place for dinner once the usual holiday insanity was past us. Nate could not have taken his own life. This just could not have happened.

We worked next door to each other when I was selling cars at Lyle Pearson and he was at Larry Miller Honda. There are just too many memorable days ahead to end the celebration like this.

My sense of loss was compounded by the memory of all of my other frends, taken from my life without warning in the past few years. Here on my desk is a picture of my friend Shane Walker who was killed in a freak dirt bike accident a year and a half ago. I thought of Bill Tandy, who perished in a traumatic fall from the connector overpass a few years ago, just a day after we had dinner together. Tim was fatally stabbed while braking up a fight, Terry missed a corner and collided with a tree up by Warm Lake, Travis and Bobby both extinguished their own lives, my college roomate died of sexual asphixia (wtf!?!), and my beloved adopted mother: Mrs Pupo passed away in a car crash while driving to fathers day dinner with her husband Juan. It's the circle of life that we cannot escape once we are born. The reality we dare not face is that every living person who was born 109 years ago, is now dead. One way or another, our time is limited. Some died young, some die 40 years after retiring. Sometimes the despots get famously hung at 68, and the innocents silently starve in a refugee camp at the age of 4.

I can't be there to end the despair nor the horrors for them. I can only watch the images I see in the media, and strive to make certain that such a reality doesn't happen to my own child.

But I could have been there for Nate. My regret is that I wasn't close enough to him to know that he was so distraught, living in fear, pain, and anguished torment. Perhaps no one was. I sit here writing this, simply stunned that Nate's life was extinguished in the mist of such sadness. I'm all too familiar with the overwhelming sense of lost hope that makes taking your life seem like a viable alternative. But now I know that the opposite is also true... happiness is right there in front of us all, just waiting to be created and marveled at.

Perhaps he just had not had enough great days like mine was yesterday. Ironically, the very same day he took his life. I wish I could have just had one more day to tell him about my Saturday. Perhaps doing so would have made his issues seem surmountable. The light at the end of his tunnel did not have to be a train coming at him. I wish

I just could have let him know that there was so much beauty here to take our attentions away from life's intrinsic ugliness. In the end, we will find no solace trying to make sense of the sheer unfairness of it all. If we could, we would all be in Darfur, toting machine guns, protecting the aid workers as they desperately try to get food to the innocents that died as I typed this. Our lessen that we can take from this tragedy is self evident: It is up to each of us to ensure that our own celebration continues, in spite of it all. This is the fundemental concept that inspires other cultures to throw a WAKE PARTY in such a time of mourning.

It was at the very moment that I accepted the sad reality of Nate's passing, I got a text message from Melinda Jones (not related to Nate) that told me that she was thinking of me, and that I should come join her and my other treasured friends in an uplifting atmosphere that was cleverly disguised as a cowboy bar on the corner of 5 Mile Road and Fairview Avenue. Her timing could simply not be any better.

So for Nate, his party is over.

Peace out, brother. I can only find comfort in the hopeful notion that your pain is now gone. My thoughts are with those you left behind, that you didn't think would be so affected by your early departure. Love you man.

Andrew