Kick

Yesterday I received a phone call advising me that a friend passed away. I knew him in the Navy as we went through training together many years ago. He was one of very few Jewish people in the Naval Special Warfare Program. Guys started calling him "Kike" but after a few fights where I weighed in on his side, the nickname was changed to "Kick" which was more to his liking. That nickname stuck and everybody called him Kick. I knew his first wife, a nice Jewish girl who couldn't handle life as a navy wife and moved home to New York. I knew his second wife, a lady who owned a bar in San Diego. I think I missed wife #3, who he married when he was stationed at NAB - Little Creek, Virginia and divorced when he was transferred to NAS - Oceana, Virginia. 

The fourth wife called me from Guam, distraught. He wanted his ashes spread on a reef he liked to spear fish at. She didn't like (was afraid of) the water and being a good Catholic, felt it wasn't a dignified way to send him off. I don't know how a Guamanian woman who lived her life on a small island and married a SEAL could be afraid of the water, but I'm sure she has her reasons.

Kick died while bench pressing something like 350 lbs at a gym where he liked to hang out in the morning with his buddies, a bunch of old has-beens like Kick and me. Heart attack, massive, here one minute gone the next. 

His wife feared for his memory if his ashes were unceremoniously dumped in the ocean over a small reef that bordered deep water (where Kick speared some really large fish). I shared a private thought I had at my ending - bronzing my butt, burying me upside down and using my ass as bicycle rack - therefore making me more useful in death than I've been in life. She took me seriously and said that perhaps dropping the ashes at the reef would be ok. 

I called the police chief on Guam (who WoFat knows, I think) and he's arranged for a police boat to take the widow out along with the buddies, who are planning a small wake on the police boat.

We live, we die,  and the best we can hope for is that our memory serves as an appropriate benediction for what we did while we laughed, cried and played on the third rock from the sun.

RIP - KICK