Mike

Back in 2014, Jonco emailed me, and he asked if he could crowdfund the bill for my dog, Lucas, who had cancer. I was in pretty bad financial shape to begin with, just bought a new truck, and the vet bill was going to be more than I could come up with. But Jonco’s plan worked, and the people who donated money to Lucas and me saved me from having to sell everything I owned.

One of the biggest donors was a guy I had never met or even heard of, who called himself XOXOXOBruce. I offered to pay Bruce back for the money he sent me and he scoffed at the idea. “You’ll pay it forward,” he told me, and since that point in time, I’ve pitched in where and to who I could, anyone with an ailing dog, or cat. Bruce was like that, I would learn, for his generosity was boundless. Bruce billed himself a curmudgeon, but the truth was found in his heart of gold.

Bruce and I began an email conversation, which led to him sending me his “Daily Dose” of funny things he found on the internet and shared with a small group of friends.

Bruce, and his real first name was Bruce, and I became friends. He lived in Pennsylvania. He liked World War Two stuff like I did, and we talked about a lot of weird stuff. He commented on nearly everything I wrote here for a while, but as time went on, Bruce apparently had some health problems, and I started hearing from him less. One day, the daily dose stopped. And on the 27^th of January Mike emailed me to say Bruce had died on the 17^th.

I didn’t know Bruce’s family. He had a girlfriend for a while, and she and I were friends for a while, but then they broke up.

Bruce liked cars and stuff like that. He knew a lot more than I about guns. He would send me random emails about odd things that somehow, he knew I would like.

One day he sent me this pin. No warning, no conversation about it, the thing just showed up, and Bruce was like that. He did things because he was thinking about his friends.

You will live one of two lives. You will die before the people you love, and never know the grief of loss. Or you will outlive the people you love, and you will know grief. Grief is made not of sorrow and loss, no, not at all. It is made of love and of life.

Or it would not exist.

And neither would you.

I miss you, Bruce,

Mike