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The two (or three), by the way, are unrelated.
In August, a friend of mine passed unexpectedly. Last week another friend passed, and it was way overdue.
Frank Winans was an extraordinary man, to say the least. Quite a while ago he found Mark Wolfe left for dead in a ditch. The rest, as they say, is history...
Mark was never quite well, after that. Frank told me he had been clinically dead at least 6 times, and for some reason my intuition tells me it was 9. There was a certain amount of brain damage, and he had circulatory problems along with a host of other medical issues. Doctors couldn't explain how Mark remained among the living.
Frank kept him alive.
They were best friends.
In 2005, having known the two of them only online, I met them for the first time in person to go on a weekend trip -- to meet someone else we had only known online. Even though "Kortron" (rest his soul) turned out to be an aging punk, the trip was, overall, quite enjoyable. Despite how annoying Mark could be at times, he was very open and loving. There was something pure about him, and like Frank he possessed psychic abilities. He could see auras, told me mine was multicoloured, "like a rainbow".
On that trip, for which I did all the driving, I played a cassette from a local Parkersburg musician. One of the songs was Let Your Dog Out. On the night Mark passed, one of our mutual friends was awakened by her German Shepherd pup licking her feet. This puppy had been locked in a kennel as part of her training to become a K9 (police) dog, and could not have gotten out on her own -- and all the Humans in the house had been asleep. Mark had a K9 school dropout German shepherd, by the way, up until Frank's passing (Frank had moved Mark in to live with him, and when Frank passed Mark was put in a hospital, then moved to another, faraway hospital after Frank's funeral).
This dog (puppy) being let out was not only a message to our mutual friends, but to me.
While I was in college my father passed, and so did my girlfriend's grandfather. Dad's passing message came to me as a news announcement on an old-time radio in a dream: "Kenneth Smith, dead at 51..."... I woke up and took a shower, which my roommate interrupted with an important phone call. It was my oldest brother, and when he told me the news I said "I know...". Heather had a watch her grandfather had given her, and it stopped. When her grandmother pried the crystal off, the watch started running again. It had stopped because the second hand had somehow been curved upward until it met the crystal.
I have questions.
Mark, an ex-Marine, was left for dead in a ditch. Why?
Frank, as it happens, had a heart condition he didn't let on about. The official finding was that his body succombed to a myocardial infarction, and that was the cause of death -- but he also suffered a massive head trauma, and bled out. Did the heart attack cause him to slip and fall, as we are led to believe, or did the hit come first, and cause the heart attack? And, was it an accident or a blow from an intruder?
Frank, long ago, was one of the 'Nasty Nine'. They were a group of hackers who, back in the day, caused a lot of trouble. Frank was always on the right side of things, so I'm sure any trouble he caused with his hacking was well-intentioned. Later on he became a paralegal, and helped a lot of people win cases against a corrupt local system. I'm not pointing any fingers, but I suspect foul play.
With Frank gone, it was only a matter of time before mark was gone too.
Of course they're not really gone. They've merely shed the 'jackets' of the corporeal beings by which we knew them, and are now flitting about in the spirit world much as they used to, when they would indulge in astral travel -- but now without the burden of having to return to a physical body.
If I miss them it's because I'm not very well tuned-in to their plane of existence.
No, I'm stuck here in the 'real'.
Here in the 'real', on Monday my wife decided to go to a shooting range for the first time -- while I was sleeping. Text from our local TV station's website:
A woman was taken to an area hospital after being shot in the stomach this afternoon.
It happened at the Mountwood Park shooting range around 3:00.
The Wood County Sheriff's Office believes the shooting was accidental.
Officials say someone was putting a gun into case when it went off.
Officers say the bullet shot through the case and hit a woman in the stomach.
The victim was taken to Camden Clark Memorial Hospital.
Her name and condition have not been released.
Her stomach was not hit. That would have been bad. The bullet didn't hit any organs at all -- and today she's back at work, with large Band-Aids over her three little GSWs and a little .22-caliber bullet riding around inside her (it wasn't removed, and she may carry it for the rest of her life).
We don't have any firearms in the house -- the .22 pistol (a rather silly piece, if you ask me) was someone else's.
As an Army veteran I have a certain amount of experience with firearms, but have never fired a handgun and don't (really*) plan to own one. For that matter I've handled and set off explosives. Should I keep those in the house?
I believe in the Second Amendment. It's just my personal choice not to exercise my right to keep and bear arms. I don't hunt, and if I did I'd have a high-powered crossbow. Handguns? No thank you -- unless...
*If I had some extra money and was bored enough, I might like to get a Magnum 500, which is a five-shot revolver that fires .50-caliber rounds. It's the biggest, meanest, most ridiculous handgun on the planet, and I kind of want one. Sort of. Not really. Never wanted to own a firearm before...
"Violence is the last resort of the incompetent."
- Isaac Asimov
Phil Smith
December 18, 2008
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