It has been 20 weeks since Charlie passed away. I am so sad and lonely. I don't think I am getting through this. We took some of his ashes out on a boat and passed them into the sea about a mile off the end of this street. The Pride Committee honored him posthumously with a lifetime achievement award, I could not attend the presentation ceremony, too emotional. Gloria & I rode in a car during the parade, I held up a picture of him so people could see it was him, not me or Gloria, being honored.
Things remind me of him. A TV show about train rides, and there I am thinking of our two trips to Oakland, one so funny with the brownies & breaking down in the tunnel and seeing Coco's favorite mission from the club car & arriving later than the whole trip was supposed to take. The other going off great, a very scenic and beautiful experience. Just simple stuff I miss. A simple drive up the coast. A drive up I 5, it is a stressful road but somehow very fun to do with him, we'd trade off after a few hundred miles, always arrive in Oakland and stay at Steve & Pat's.
Flew to Seattle. Boy was that a great trip. I knew it would be as soon as we took off from Oakland, the rice fields of No. Cal, then going just far enough west of the big volcanos that you could look down on their craters. I recognized some mtn. that Charlie, Don & Don & I had stopped on near Medford years before. Rental car in Seattle, on to Vancouver, on to the ferry to Nanaimo then motoring across Vancouver Island to Tofino on the rain coast which gave us beautiful clear warm sunny weather. The restaurant on the national park, built onto a point of land jutting out into the sea, looking over Charlie's shoulder & seeing whales jumping from the sea. Wow. What a beautiful place. Charlie didn't like the first place we had rented, he insisted on another and boy was he right, a billion dollar view off the deck of a modest little motel by a bay surrounded by mtns. Wonderful trip. Back in Vancouver he woke me, saying there was a bear on the deck, oh go back to sleep I said, but it WAS a bear, the size of a Volkswagen, he stared at us then went away.
On the ferry back I ran into a college chum, we contacted him & his gf in Seattle, they told us fun things to see & do in the NW. Madison St. Beach, it was running very hot in Seattle, near 100 deg, everyone was at the beaches on Lake Washington, one Madison St. Beach made of grass, well populated with gay folk, Madison St. home to some very nice restaurants, everybody got take out and ate in the shade beside the lake. So fun. Mt. Rainier so majestic. I will never get to do that with Charlie again. They told us about the Cascade Loop, what a wonderful exquisite spectacular drive. We took off on it after staying in a motel in Moclips on the coast, also wonderful. 4 days in the motel, just wonderful.
I watch a lot of TV, murder mystery shows. I envy the dead. We would be together again. I miss him so much. I was the luckiest guy in the world. He got to be difficult with his disease but was paradise wonderful fun up til he got sick.
