Thursday, March 30, 2006
Heroes and friends
A hero will help you find good in yourself, a friend won’t forsake you for somebody else. Left standing beside you when your life ends One is your heroes and the other your friends.
Or some shit like that, I heard it in a country song.
I first meet Bret Hagar on the streets of Lewes one dark night in front of the Blacksmith Shop John The Blacksmith and I were drinking some mixed high powered alcoholic concoction from a Fleaker which is some exotic calibrated scientific glass resembling a Beaker.
Bret was part of an Ohio family that John knew. The little 15 year old was about to enter Cape as a sophomore and there was also his little toddling sister Alice. I told Bret he looked like a wrestler and he said he never wrestled. I once asked a clinically anorexic girl if she ran cross country because I have those instincts so when I asked Bret if he wrestled I had no way of knowing he was skinny because of Cystic Fibrosis.
Over the year Bret and I became tight and he was my student and laughed at my jokes and when he would go north for hospitalization so they could beat the crap out of his lungs and always called him and we laugh over the phone and then he’d come back and we’d resume where we left off.
Bret graduated from Cape in 1988 then went on to the University of Delaware. I knew he was there and that he took classes, passed tests went to parties and took regular beatings at Christiana Hospital.
One hot Saturday summer day circa 1990 I was at the Lewes Yacht Club where I was the pool manager. There were lots of privileged people moving around faster than the wind which had dropped out
Alice came up to me she was in third grade and said, “Fredman can we sit down at a table I want to tell you something.”
And so we sat at one of those round resin tables and she looked at me through her glasses and said, ”My brother died last night.”
I heard it loud and clear an didn’t do the usual “what, you’re kidding oh my god, ”routine. I just grabbed both her hands and squeezed them.
“Alice are you alright, ”I asked.
“Yes, I’m alright. My mother just wanted me to tell you because Bret was your friend. The funeral is Wednesday at Saint Peters. And just that quickly Alice was gone.
A middle aged woman in skirt bottomed bathing suit and noted pool bitch was standing as if patiently waiting for an audience and ask me if I had any tile cleaner in the pool office. ‘Sure I guess so, ”I said inside a fog sadness for Bret not me.
“Well do you ever use it!”
I am too smart to call somebody wife and the mother of three a fucking bitch but I was abruptly rude and she was stunned but you know if bitches were called out more often there would be as many of them.
That Wednesday I was at the Episcopalian service and the dreaded Karaoke open Mic Eulogy interlude began.
I desperately wanted to tell the story of how Bret was my hero and friend and I asked god for strength but he said, ”You’re on your own on this one. I gave you a chance to up your game with the tile cleaner lady but yu blew it”
I passed, because a man ain’t supposed to cry, so I’ll write it here now for the first time. Bret Hagar is still my hero!
“I’m older now ain’t got no time to cry. Ain’t got no time to look back, ain’t got no time to see, the pieces of my heart,that have been ripped away from me.” Merle Haggard
Or some shit like that, I heard it in a country song.
I first meet Bret Hagar on the streets of Lewes one dark night in front of the Blacksmith Shop John The Blacksmith and I were drinking some mixed high powered alcoholic concoction from a Fleaker which is some exotic calibrated scientific glass resembling a Beaker.
Bret was part of an Ohio family that John knew. The little 15 year old was about to enter Cape as a sophomore and there was also his little toddling sister Alice. I told Bret he looked like a wrestler and he said he never wrestled. I once asked a clinically anorexic girl if she ran cross country because I have those instincts so when I asked Bret if he wrestled I had no way of knowing he was skinny because of Cystic Fibrosis.
Over the year Bret and I became tight and he was my student and laughed at my jokes and when he would go north for hospitalization so they could beat the crap out of his lungs and always called him and we laugh over the phone and then he’d come back and we’d resume where we left off.
Bret graduated from Cape in 1988 then went on to the University of Delaware. I knew he was there and that he took classes, passed tests went to parties and took regular beatings at Christiana Hospital.
One hot Saturday summer day circa 1990 I was at the Lewes Yacht Club where I was the pool manager. There were lots of privileged people moving around faster than the wind which had dropped out
Alice came up to me she was in third grade and said, “Fredman can we sit down at a table I want to tell you something.”
And so we sat at one of those round resin tables and she looked at me through her glasses and said, ”My brother died last night.”
I heard it loud and clear an didn’t do the usual “what, you’re kidding oh my god, ”routine. I just grabbed both her hands and squeezed them.
“Alice are you alright, ”I asked.
“Yes, I’m alright. My mother just wanted me to tell you because Bret was your friend. The funeral is Wednesday at Saint Peters. And just that quickly Alice was gone.
A middle aged woman in skirt bottomed bathing suit and noted pool bitch was standing as if patiently waiting for an audience and ask me if I had any tile cleaner in the pool office. ‘Sure I guess so, ”I said inside a fog sadness for Bret not me.
“Well do you ever use it!”
I am too smart to call somebody wife and the mother of three a fucking bitch but I was abruptly rude and she was stunned but you know if bitches were called out more often there would be as many of them.
That Wednesday I was at the Episcopalian service and the dreaded Karaoke open Mic Eulogy interlude began.
I desperately wanted to tell the story of how Bret was my hero and friend and I asked god for strength but he said, ”You’re on your own on this one. I gave you a chance to up your game with the tile cleaner lady but yu blew it”
I passed, because a man ain’t supposed to cry, so I’ll write it here now for the first time. Bret Hagar is still my hero!
“I’m older now ain’t got no time to cry. Ain’t got no time to look back, ain’t got no time to see, the pieces of my heart,that have been ripped away from me.” Merle Haggard
