Old Friend Dies From Flu Complications...

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I mean WAS 53 years old. Brian died last night. He got the flu, went to Urgent Care– who gave him fluids and sent him home. A few days later, when he wasn’t answering his phone/texts, etc. his little brother Jay went to check on him and found him struggling to breathe. He got pneumonia from the flu and by the time he got to the hospital, his organs were shutting down. He’d caught the flu only 2 weeks before this.

Then he was in ICU for several weeks, on breathing machines and the whole bit. But then he started– very slowly– to get better. They moved him out of ICU to a monitoring unit and had plans to send him to a rehab facility in early January. His organs– which nearly all failed– had come back “online” a little at a time until he only had bad kidneys and needed dialysis but that’s it. He woke up (he was in a coma for a while) and everything. The last I heard, he was starting to come back.

Then it was Christmas… and something went wrong this week. I don’t know details yet. But Robin told me she’ll call me tonight.

I haven’t been close to Brian for years, but I always heard about him and his marriage to Rose and how he was the family hero. (Every addict family seems to have a “hero” kid– Robin was the “acting out” kid.) He raised his younger half-brother when the abuse at his mother’s house got too bad (10 years between them). He helped out Robin. He helped his mom. He was the kind but tough guy who kept shit going when it kept falling apart all around him and now he’s gone… It’s very sad and very scary how easy it was to die of the flu.

R.I.P. Brian… Photos of him at his late 80s marriage, and out hiking in the early 90s.

Oh shit! OH SHIT!!!

I dreamed about Brian last night. I haven’t dreamed of him since I was a teenager (I had a crush on him long ago). That’s fucking weird. In the dream, he was a teenager again, but with blond highlights. He was the same bright, exuberant guy I remember from back then, and things were going wrong in the dream and he appeared along with a mother and baby bear. The bears disappeared, and Brian came and sat next to me, and was SUPER nice and just said, “Things are going to be okay.” He said more than that but I can’t remember it– just reassuring things.

It’s the last thing I recall before I woke up and then I put on the latest Christopher Titus podcast (every Friday) and Titus said, “Things are NOT going to be okay. Nothing will ever be okay. Not really. But you can get through this...”

Weird.

Anyway… just had good sob over that. I didn’t feel it until I recalled the dream and then I just lost it. I don’t know why. I’ll tell Robin about the dream and the weird coincidence of the timing. Maybe it was him telling me he’s okay— maybe it’s just a weird timing thing. I don’t really cling to the “coincidence” theory as a rule. Synchronicities are a thing that cross the reality barrier sometimes. Who can say? Not me. I wish he hadn’t gone so young. And I really feel for my friend, Robin, who has already told me is devastated. She didn’t need this right now. Shit…

[Later: Turns out that the mother and baby bears WAS one of those amazing coincidences. Robin brought her brother a nurse teddy bear with a baby bear, and Brian was confused because HE was the big brother. But Robin said she was the nurse and he was the baby, and she'd help him get better again. She never told me that, so when I related the dream to her, she burst into sobs-- it was a sign that the dream I had was a communication from Brian after all...]