As I was driving down to see Aleks and her family on Sunday evening, I called Ash again since we'd been playing phone tag since a little while before Christmas. He picked up, or maybe he called me back quickly -- that part is something of a blur to me now. At any rate, we finally got to talk. Ash is one of my closest friends ever, very dear to me, and his extended group of friends (especially his girlfriend, Stephanie) are dear to me as well. I miss them all. I have a picture of Stephanie on my phone from when Ash and I went on a shopping trip for her in the kid's section ('cause she's so tiny) of Target, which makes me laugh every time I look at it. Such a quirky pair, she so full of life and humor, and he a little darker yet incredibly caring.

Shortly after I first met Ash not even a year ago, he was coming to my apartment to pick up one of the bazillion extra tables I'd acquired somehow. He brought with him Breon and, I think, Dugger. Perhaps it was one of the other guys. At any rate, that's when I first met Breon .. tall, football-tackler big, with something of a short afro framing his face. Bre told me sometime later that he only had one lung, since the other had been removed due to cancer. We had a great relationship, I felt, a very playful, fun friendship that included some particular conversations on levels not usually found. For example, there's no one quite like someone who has only one lung to talk with about breathing trouble. Or someone who has had cancer with whom you can talk about death and its finer points.

His cancer came back shortly before I left for bootcamp. He spent a few days in the hospital getting treatments and then a few days in an apartment in Charlottesville recovering. I didn't make it up to see him there, though we did talk on the phone a couple of times. He was back by the time I was going to be able to make the one hour drive, so we had lots of quality time, his newly-shaven self and I.

I saw him a couple of times, too, while I was home on leave. And we talked once or twice after I got down here.

Ash told me during our conversation on Sunday that Bre's other lung was having complications, so he had been hospitalized. Soon after, he developed pnuemonia. And on Wednesday, December 29th, he passed away.

I didn't quite cry that night, when Ash told me, mostly because I was on a very dangerous stretch of I-95 through South FL, and we talked about some great times with Bre that made me laugh instead. But when I was driving home Monday evening, I was thinking about the funeral that would take place Tuesday in Lynchburg. The funeral that I could not attend, the friend I had not been able to see during his last two months or that final week in the hospital. The friend I had not been able to say goodbye to. I pictured him, then, in a coffin. I pictured Ash and the guys around his grave. And I cried then. And I have cried a few times since. I was not as close to Bre as the Halo-guys were. (Although it seems almost every guy I know plays Halo, and many in large groups, this was the group that introduced me to it in person.. the group on whose TVs I first watched the game played. Rare was the night we were all hanging out at Ash's and there wasn't a game of Halo at some point. So, to me, these are the Halo-guys.) They had known him for years and they all had that male-bonding thing I could never be a part of. But he was, as he liked to be called, my "Big, Black Teddy Bear". He was my Bre, the chubby-cheeked smiley guy who could do something silley to playfully aggrivate me, and then beg me not to take out his other lung. "I've only got one!" he'd say, and we'd verbally spar in the sense of trash talk and silleyness. And then I'd sit on the couch between him and Ash and Stephanie and we'd all watch a movie together, and he'd tell all the Halo-guys that I was his girl. "Don't mess with her," he'd warn. "She's my girl!" And I would ask him how much of a threat that was from a kid with one lung.

I knew.. we all knew that he was sick. And that it had been getting worse again.

Ash's brother, Freeman, had given Bre a large quantity of Jones Soda for Christmas. (I was trying to remember the other day -- I think that the guys already loved Jones before I met them, which was one of the reasons we hit it off so well. But, since I've been such a spreader of the joy that is Jones Soda for so long, getting plenty of friends - old and new alike - hooked on the colorful substances within the classy and changing bottles, it's possible they heard about it through me and were wise enough to listen. I'm pretty sure, though, that they were already fans.) Apparently, Bre's last day included a request to his father to bring all the Jones to him at the hospital, and then he dropped all the sour patch kids and other such candy he'd received into the sodas, and drank them all in one day. What a way to go. I love my Jones, but I'm pretty sure I'd only drink that many of them when I was preparing to leave this world, too.

Bre, I miss you. I missed you since I moved away, since I left for bootcamp and again since I got here. And now I miss you even more, knowing when I go back to the Burg, you won't be there in person. I'll bring flowers to your gravesite, and we'll drink some Jones in your honor. And as Ash suggested, every December 29th we'll have a Bre memorial party in which we all drink lots of Jones Soda and eat lots of candy.