Thursday, September 19, 2013

An Annual Sadness (I Had a Dream)


April 15th, 2007, my blood-brother and best friend of 20 years, Matt Welty, died of an unexpected and massive heart attack. He was 45 years old. October 18th is his birthday.


It's not uncommon for me to feel down around these days and I often don't realize why until I look at a calendar. Matt was one of the first people I met when I moved from small-town Kentucky to big-city Orange County. Matt was my backup. My safety net. He was one of the few people who witnessed my transformation from naive country boy to...well, naive and educated world traveler. I have a few friends I've known longer, one in particular is very dear to me, but none of them watched me struggle to figure out the world outside of the romantic fairy tales I'd built around myself.