Can It Be It Was All So Simple

I don't remember when I met him but I know it was a good day.

Hearts choose you and today, I am even more certain of it.

For over twelve years, I worked in a comics shop and made more friends than I sometimes believe I have any right to.

As the years passed, those friends of mine, literally hung around, listened to one another and became friends. From a seed, a tree. We have conversed with one another. Spent evenings outside of a comics shop with one another. Attended baby showers with one another. And when one moved away, we promised to continue to meet with one another.

And we did because... we had history and every time we would get together, it reminded us of us and how we came to be. This sort of disparate comics reading family.

Three years back, events took place threatening to fracture what it'd taken years for us to build. I was to be fired and the business of doing business was meant, as it should, to go on. The "customer base" had other ideas.

One word was never said to me about it. Apparently, I had little say in the matter.

Not about the job but about what was to happen next.

The customers walked. They walked.

En masse. They'd decided that I needed to be shown loyalty and good faith and they effectively, quit a business.

Months before, I'd stood before them and at a particularly trying time in my life, I spoke my heart to that room.

"Everyone of you are like family and just like family, I would not hesitate to have any one of you at my table."

It was my truth and I don't speak it often or as much as I should. I remember feeling the lump gathering at the back of throat and then, out of the corner of my eye, a gentle nodding caught my eye. It was acceptance. It was unity. At a time when I felt as though I could do nothing right, there it was, the subtle acknowledgment that it was going to be OK.

It came from my friend. The same one who would months later help spearhead a walkout simply because "you don't treat my friend like that."

And that's the difference between "people" and friends. People will weigh you down by simply being people, a friend can say everything you need to hear by simply just being.

With him, it was simple.

A friend will want you to shine with them, brightly, spreading it out into the world.

My friend had shine. He lent me some of his.

He was a star and had it to give.

Today, my friend, Martin Bosworth passed away.

We all continue to shine.