For "E-bone"

So, despite the whole trying to maintain a blog thing, I'm still very, very bad at figuring out what I am thinking in writing. Today, it's more difficult than ever. Almost every paper I've ever written has been for school. These papers...they don't matter much, for the most part. In my case, they were mostly papers about chemistry or german history. So there's little to do but to report what's happening/happened and attempt an objective analysis. Analyses of German Lit demands somewhat more creative input, but it's still relatively easy. Besides, as I'm sure we've all done, you don't have to really invest yourself in these kinds of papers. Put in your ideas, sure, but at the end it's a paper that's going to result somewhat quickly in a grade, followed by forgetting the paper was ever written. With what I'm writing tonight, I don't want to do that. This project is demanding that I actually sit down and think about what I want to say, and say it in a way that 30 years from now I can look back on it and remember having written it. Because that will mean that I remember its subject, which is the entire point of the piece. So what is it? What is it that's proving to be so difficult?

What I'm trying to write tonight is something of a tribute for a good friend. Today, I did something that I thought I was ready for. I wasn't, at least, not really. I attended the wake (or "viewing", if you will) of someone I met sometime around the 9th grade and who graduated one year before I did (though that particular occurrence was a few weeks later than everyone else, due to some deal with a current-events style class that never got made up.) This is a guy that I've spent a night camping in the woods with, gone to concerts with, been shot by (with a plastic bb), and from whom I got my first bucket hat (he gave it to me after deciding olive was a good color for me). Ed Stecz, a friend, passed away Sunday, 10 days after his 23rd birthday. I remember thinking, when I was a junior in high school near the end of the year, "Senior Year is going to be different without Ed here everyday." And I can say that, while I haven't been as in touch with him or anyone from home as I probably should have been, life isn't going to be the same now, without Ed. Perhaps I'm simply romanticizing this because of the shock of his death and funeral, but I can honestly say that Ed probably had a bigger impact on my shedding the shy act than anyone else. He was accepting, if nothing else. So, as this is getting long and I should get to actually completing this tribute to send to James (another friend who's putting a collection together to remember Ed,) I'll just say that, though by no means perfect, Ed was a bright spot in the world.

So here's to you, Edward F. "E-bone" Stecz. You made a difference. You succeeded.