Brian King, and the Price of Friendship

My brother called  told me that an old friend, Brian King had died yesterday (Saturday).  He was an amateur pilot and had crashed, I think while traveling from Georgia back to his home in Birmingham.  Besides all the others who will mourn him, his wife is left with the care of their kids...I think they had four, but I'm not sure. 

Brian lived in birmingham and went to Church with Hovie.  He's worked with teenagers for as long as I've known him, at first professionally and then as a long term volunteer, and he was a pretty hilarious person for the role.  He would say and do some of the craziest stuff.  Not much of a filter, and he had no problem putting something awkwardly bluntly.  I think maybe a fifth of the time I was ever around him I was embarrassed, but somehow it was okay, because he really made me laugh.  

When I was ( I think) a freshman in high school, some of my friends in florence went to church where Brian was the youth minister, and so I got to hang out with him from time to time.  Once we went on this ski trip to North Carolina, probably one of my first really long church youth group trips.  I think if I looked back on it now, from my professional lenses, the trip might have driven me a little crazy, but at the time it was just one of those things I kind of needed.  He really did a pretty awesome job of making me feel really welcome, like I belonged, and for an awkward fourteen year old kid, that was a pretty significant thing.  Even this past year when I saw him we still laughed about some of the things on that trip, including...

On the way back, we stopped at a McDonalds outside Chattanooga.  I don't know why I was held up...maybe just last in line or something.  Anyways, the bus left and I got left behind.  Keep in mind this was 1992 or so.  Which means that even though (amazingly) I think he had a cell phone, none of us kids had them, and I definitely didn't have his number.  Which meant that I was kind of screwed, but no sweat, I was a pretty composed kid.  I got some change and called home, and my folks stated digging up his cell number, and I gave them time to find it, and called them back from the payphone to get it.  It was  a pretty shady area, and I remember this guy came up to me at the payphone and asked me if I was wearing any gold.  that was weird, particularly if you knew me as a high school freshman.  Gold?  Really?  

Anyways, by the time I got the number and called Brian, they were just a minute or so from being back to the McDonalds...maybe even pulling up.  I guess I was there 25-30 minutes.  

We laughed about that for a long time then, and the memory of it for an even longer time.  It makes me sad that I won't be able to laugh with him about it again for a while.  But I'm glad that I experienced Brian.  

That's the real kicker of life:  we are allowed to love, to share friendship, to laugh, but always it is only for a little while.  Brian's "little while" was shorter than it should have been, but even if he had lived a nice long life, it would only have been a little while, "a breath" as scripture says it.  So we live and love always knowing that the price for friendship, the price of love, will always be the same.  We cannot help but pay it: we will part company and bid each other farewell.  even those of us who believe that the parting is for a different sort of "little while" must acknowledge the grief that comes with the parting.  

I think it requires some faith to believe in the promise of reunion.  But that measure of faith is a subject for a different day  what I'm thinking about tonight is the faith that says that even though we must part company, even though we pay the price of farewells, love and friendship are worth the price.  

I believe that they are worth the price.  

The world will miss you, Brian King.