The last time I saw Eric was during a hospital stay.  We had spent a lot of years together, and there were a lot of really important years we had spent apart.  He was my oldest friend, by that I mean he was the first person near my own age that I knew cared about me and I for him.

He was in first grade.  I was in kindergarten.  We rode the same bus, and he was always telling me about what was to come in the year ahead, both in terms of school and life, at least as we were best equipped to understand it then.

There are those who think going back is solely about nostalgia.  Sometimes, I think, it’s about finding out.  The past of course, but the present and future too.

I first reconnected with Eric following his diagnosis of terminal brain cancer.  Some high school friends and I arrived to a full hospital room.  Eric, who was scheduled for surgery the next day, was up and walking around and working the room, laughing and seemingly without a care in the world.

There were so many folks to talk to him, my attention settled on his son, William, a junior in high school, that reminded me a great deal of Eric at that age.

“Tell me a story about my Dad,” he asked.  “One from back in the day.”

I thought of the things then that I still think about now.  Eric had a silver Escort EXP when we were in school.  It was a sporty looking little thing, with a fastback.  I had a blue, 2 door Caprice Landau that had this three piece back window.

And I thought of the Madison and Warren County rock roads, and the hot days of early fall, and how they spilled their secrets of the season to come in the cool air of their evenings, and how we drove over and through them with reckless abandon, believing all things were possible and feeling invincible, and all the ways since in our own relationship and our own quiet lives we learned that we were not invincible after all.

But I did not tell his son all that.

“I’ve heard your Dad’s old car is still at your grandfather’s.  Is that right?”

“The EXP?  Oh yeah, he’s still got it.”

“Your dad had us carrying a box of pop bottle rockets under our seats.  We would let one go at a stoplight, or into the darkness from a gravel road, but we’d love to send them back to a buddy tailing behind us.

If you were by yourself, you’d prop your knee up against the wheel, fish underneath the seat for the pack, and simultaneously press in the cigeratte lighter by the ashtray.  You would work the wick away from the long stick it was taped to, and by the time you got that done, the lighter would pop.

You had to hold it tight enough so the wind wouldn’t take it when you put it out the window.  When you felt it take off, or reached the point you thought it should have, you let go.

Your Dad got these whistlers one time.  He thought they would make more of a racket.  One night I was with him.  When he let go, the wind brought it right back through his window.  He had just enough time to lock the brakes up, slinging gravel everywhere, yelling, ‘It’s in the back.  It’s in the back.’

We slid down in our seats and threw our hands over our heads as it started screaming and bouncing around the car.  It got caught under your Dad’s baseball coat, exploded and filled the car with smoke.

Your Dad jumped out still laughing, worried his car was on fire.  We laughed and laughed.”

The last time I saw Eric, a couple nurses came in, and his wife, Brenda, and I stepped out into the hall to give them more room.

While out there this woman walked by, stopped and asked Brenda if her last name was Goodale.

“You don’t know me, but I’ve followed your husband’s posts on Facebook and your guys’ story, and I just can’t tell you how much his sharing has meant to me.”

“Well, he’s right in there if you’d like to tell him yourself.”

The nurses came out, and we followed her in, and for a few seconds she told Eric exactly what she told Brenda in the hallway.  Then she told him she’d continue to pray for him.

“Thanks.  I’ll pray for you,” Eric said as she left.

“Well that was something,” I said.

“Not the first time that’s happened.”

“Hell, I think I’d start charging for autographs.”

Then I told him how proud I was to be his friend.

I imagine Eric would say God is all that’s invincible.  I don’t know if that makes some of us disappointed, or bitter, or resentful, or scared, or all of the above.  Some still hold fast to the belief that they are going to show us all.

I do know letting go of all that happens to put us in a spot that allows us to build strong bonds with others, and meet others at the place they are most accessivle, where they are at.

I know it because Eric did it.

Eric did it in his career, did it in his hobbies, and in his most challenging moments.  He  connected to people, and people to God and his faith.

I hope Eric can see where all those paths he made lead.  Someday maybe we will look back, nostalgia or otherwise, and see it ourselves.  Along the way, may we follow his lead and create skme of our own.