‘Cause How Many Times Can You Wake Up in This Comic Book & Plant Flowers?

My best friend George died of a drug overdose. He’d been clean for over two decades, but then COVID, paired with isolation, marginalization, and his being proud… instead of reaching out he retreated inward, deciding ‘just this once,’ which turned into ‘ok, this is the last time’ so that his ‘just this very last hit’ culminated in his death.

This is Vancouver, and the shit coming in from overseas doesn’t discriminate. Good, bad, new, newly relapsed, or too far gone, it just kills.

George was a kid who was too damned smart for his own good. Too much for his mom. Too much of a prankster brat, so she kicked him out of her home at the impressionable age of 15. How could she?

Well, she could, and she did,

George lived on the streets for years, becoming a prominent drug dealer because he was smart and he knew how to get things done. He was invited to all the “exclusive” parties – in Whistler and around Vancouver – the ones hosted by political figureheads and other upper crust types who wanted their juice but they wanted it from a trusted, reliable source that wouldn’t yap. That was George. The stories he told me (and very few others) involved some of BC’s most prominent leaders, none of whom were ever compromised.

Eventually, he got clean and he stopped dealing.

Then he met Jen, his soon to be wife, and they had a baby girl, the light of his life.

George was brilliant. He was a gifted builder and an amazing problem-solver. His ability to transform 2D plans into 3D works of wonder was incredible. He was an artist, a worker, and a technical wizard – naturally – and he put that ultra-synapse-firing mind of his to work building houses from the ground up.

All that talent and he could never get ahead, never. George, like most of society, was missing the intangibles – the stuff that others knew how to leverage to prosper: Ivy League degrees, connections, family lineage. He had none of that. He was too poor to afford the right suits, shoes, or even dental work. You get the picture.

He died alone. Fighting demons I’m sure. He was one of the best and his death was so unjust. So preventable. So socio-economically immoral. George was a true pillar of society, in the way these things ought to be measured, not in the way they are.

I love you George, and I miss you every day, buddy.

How many times can you wake up in this comic book and plant flowers? How many times have you stepped over that guy on the street, asking for help.