For Jack

hi all- this post is a commemoration, a poem, a love song for my newly departed much loved friend jack foley, who slipped from this life into the great unknown on September 1st 2012, with the wind at his back, and a bagpiper leading us all, his friends and his loved ones from his commemoration ceremony to the reception, up the hill from the field where we all sat in our various stages of grief and relief,that his suffering was past, that he could finally go home to that next stage of life of which i know nothing, except that his time here is past, and the next stage begun. i told my son alex who adored jack and was devastated by his death, that if there is a heaven then jack was on the express train there, for surely there was no better friend, no better lover of life, no better lover of his wife(or his bride as he used to call her) and their three beautiful children . jack,  whose friend i was so proud to be, i will miss you with all of my heart. i remember things both silly and profound-introducing him to coleen, who told me with ferocious intensity that it was he that she wanted to marry, and the night i threw my glasses(which i was blind without) off the ferryboat back to staten island after a night of drunken debauchery in order to liberate myself in my drunken mind ,to both jack's amusement and terror, as he had to lead me off the boat and take me blindly home. i remember that he laughed like a little girl, and that he laughed often and well, and i have a particularly poignant memory of him sitting on the bench in their foyer with alex, talking to him as his equal, something not enough people do to alex, and for which i was profoundly grateful.there are many more stories to tell, many more tributes to be paid, many more glasses raised- but for me i just want to thank him for being my friend, and try to pay back some of the love he sent my way, and to tell him he will be sorely missed and that most of all, he went away much too soon for all of us who loved him, and that without him nothing will ever be the same .good night,good-bye.,brigid