Just Stopping By

Took a vacation day today. My second one in less than a month. The second one this year. The second one taken to attend a funeral.

The first was for my wife's aunt last month. Today is for the father of my youngest son's girlfriend.

Not the way I prefer to spend vacation days. But then, others have more to complain about, don't they?

I was just getting to know Randy. They live 45 miles away, so we mostly only saw each other when something related to our children's relationship came up. The last time was when my son and girlfriend were up from Alabama to pick up more of their stuff from our homes. After helping load the moving truck at our house we all headed out to meet their friends at Scoreboards and have a fun time eating and drinking.

Randy is the one who taught the class I took in order to get my Concealed Handgun License. It was his gun I fired after the qualifying and liked so much I went and bought the same gun. Nothing high end. Just down and dirty basic 9mm that shoots very well.

Randy and I had another thing in common. We were both firefighters. Although I gave it up almost 4 years ago with 19 years of service, Randy was still going after 29 years on his department. He at one time was Fire Chief of the department.

He and I also both lived in our life-long hometowns.

I really wish we'd gotten to know each other better as I suspect we would have over the coming years.

Instead, today we say goodbye.

R.I.P. Randy.