In what was only my fourth visit back since graduating, I found myself in Oakdale Saturday for the second time in as many weekends...

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I've tried writing what's supposed to follow that sentence about five times. I've come up with everything from something about hugs to a diatribe about how so many people treat what should be a code of friendship as everyday bullshit. The former was entirely too sappy to be true and the latter... Well I have no idea where the latter came from.

The point is that nothing I write seems to fit. I hoping that by writing about how nothing fit, I might find something that describes it perfectly.

I went down there and I saw my friends. I made sure they were okay. I tried to make them feel better without trying to make them feel better... Because when it comes to stuff like this, it's easy to try too hard. I was rewarded for driving down because seeing them made me feel better, too. As it turned out, I didn't just want to see them... I needed to be there with them. I needed to be a part of what they had there. It didn't matter to anyone in Franklin or Lakeland that Guy had died. But it mattered to me and I needed to be with folks who felt the same.

I'm just on the outskirts of this situation. Sara and the gang in Oakdale have lost someone that was part of their day-to-day life. I'm hit with deep thoughts about how short life is. For them, deep thoughts can come later... For now, their lives have been left with a huge, gaping hole. And I'm still so very sad for them...