My Friend Rich

For Father's Day, it would be nice to write sumpin' about my father like I did about my mother, but I can't. My father was an alcoholic. I didn't have too many problems with him, but my mother and sister did. And he was out of work a lot, so we were poor. It wasn't grinding poverty because my mother worked and knew how to handle money. It's a shame about my father because he was extremely intelligent but suffered from a disease, which is what alcoholism is.

And while I'm talking about my father, exactly when was I became him (minus the alcoholism)? I've taken to pulling my pants up like old men do. And I always wondered why my father would smack his lips. I thought it was the false teeth, but no, it's because when you get to be an old fart like me, for some reason your mouth gets dry. But enough of that.

I want to tell you about my friend Rich. When I started with TCIDNN (The Company I Dare Not Name) 30 years ago, Rich was one of my mentors. We used to have coffee every morning and we'd meet for lunch every afternoon, first at a bank cafeteria, until they discovered we didn't work there and kicked us out, and then at Teutenbergs, which was a little lunch place on the first floor of another bank in St. Louis.

We were a jolly bunch then and a lot of the people in our group used to stop after work and take in happy hour at various bars. We always tried to get Rich to stop, but he was henpecked and unless he got permission from his wife, he couldn't stop with us, not even for one beer.

He had three children and his wife didn't work. He treated his wife like a queen.

Four and one half years after starting at TCIDNN I got a different job with the company in another part of St. Louis, so I didn't get to see Rich on a daily basis. I did see him occasionally in the evening and on the weekends.

Rich was a real good woodworker. One Saturday, he, another friend and I got a case of beer and some wood and built a bookshelf/entertainment center. We built it in two pieces to make it easy to move. Assembled it was six feet high and eight feet long. I used it in three different apartments. I still have it. It is in my garage and I use it for storage. It's over twenty five years old.

About two years before I left St. Louis Rich moved into St. Louis Hills, which is an upscale neighborhood in the city. He had a beautiful house in the suburbs but his wife had always dreamed of living in St. Louis Hills. The house they moved into was smaller than the house in the suburbs, but, what Rich's wife wanted, she got.

Did I tell you Rich treated her like a queen? She bitched at Rich that he didn't make enough money, so he took a job in sales. Meanwhile she who was an RN, never worked during their marriage. With the kids in school, she did fun things like take ice skating lessons. For her, life was good.

Somehow she met a doctor who wanted to marry her (Why, I don't know. She was homely as sin) and asked Rich for a divorce. This was right before I moved down here, so I let Rich stay at my flat until I sold it.

So Rich got divorced and his wife married the doctor. And sometimes there is justice in the world. The doctor's exwife took him to the cleaners in his divorce so when he married Rich's wife, she had to go to work.

Rich rented a flat in the city for a year, and then bought a fixer upper house in the city. He wanted to have enough room for when he got his three children. He loved his children.

At this time. I was driving up to St. Louis twice a year, once for Thanksgiving and once for Mother's Day. Rich was always the first person I would see. I'd stop by his house and we'd have a few beers.

After my accident, he got a different job with TCIDNN and came down to Atlanta twice for training. He was too far away to stay with me, but he came up to see me on the weekends.

It was about this time that he met Kay. They got married and Kay, with her three children, moved in with Rich. Kay is a wonderful woman. It was obvious that she and Rich were very much in love, and after what Rich went through with his first wife, I was happy that he had found someone like Kay. She loved Rich's kids as if they were her own and he felt the same way about her kids. Her kids liked Rich and his kids like Kay.

I still saw Rich every time I was in St. Louis, but a few years back (and I cannot say when as time goes by more quickly as I get older) when I saw him he looked like crap. Rich smoked like a chimney. He started having problems breathing and went to the doctor and they found a big ol' tumor. They had it removed and he was on chemo. All his hair was gone. He was in good spirits, but that was Rich. I saw him one more time.

Kay called me right after the funeral. He died peacefully in the hospital with his family at his bedside. I know Kay's kids felt like they had lost their father. After all, he considered them his children.

Kay remarried a few years back, but she kept Rich's last name hyphenated with her new husband's name. I've never been much for hyphenated names but in this case I thought is was touching that Kay did this. She has called me a few times over the years and caught me up with how she is doing. She is one classy lady.

Rich was a great friend and a wonderful person. He was also a great father.

I miss him a lot.

Posted by denny at June 15, 2003 12:00 AM  Category: My Soft Side