I Will Miss My Friends It seems that for whatever reason you do get to meet special people who touch your life for a time and then are gone all of the sudden. Yes all over the world they are talking about Tom and Naomi Shirleys untimely death together, but I knew them in life as friends and mentors and not the famous game warden he was. My sister married Tom Shirley Jr. whom I had known for a lot longer having met him in Jr. High. I had heard about Tom from my Big Brother because he had had run ins with him in the Glades. Yet as I got to know Tommy I got to meet his father a time or 2. Tommy, a friend, Randy, and I watched Toms Marshall Arts films and learned Korean Kung Fu from them. (Randy and I tried it out on others in the neighborhood.) It was also Tommy and Ray who used to tap me on the shoulder in the school cafeteria and steal my desert from the other side. So the apple didnt fall far from the tree as they say. I spent many a time parked in the middle of the street talking with Troy about the gossip in the hood. Yet it would be a few years more until I really got to know Tom & Naomi and it started with my sister, Elaine, marrying Tommy. I had limited contact when my mother was still alive and upon her death I left the state of Florida not to return for almost 8 years. I came back with a woman and child in tow in January of 96 and the following Thanksgiving was my first real sit down with the both of them. Of course we had heard stories about each other over the years. Me wrecking things from cars to marriages and thru me sister the stories of everybody back here. Cant remember them all, but it didnt take us long to catch up and talk about the world around us. And was that always and interesting discussion that I will never forget. Right after we moved back to Florida my girlfriend became pregnant again and we had a son to go along with our beautiful daughter. As time went on Tom and Naomi became the grandparents my kids never had. Elaine and I lost our father when I was 10 and she was 7 and then out mother when I had already turned 27 and Elaine was coming on 24. My daughter had only known her maternal grandmother for a while until we moved back here from New Jersey and began a new life. They would always ask Elaine about us and when we got together over many a holiday dinner they always took a great interest in our wellbeing and how we were doing in life. As them being surrogate grandparents they were particularly kind after my kids mother ran out on us and decided to live on the streets. So now we have a rather mixed family just like the Shirleys and were also a part of their great family as well. And in that time it was Naomi who would sit and listen to me cry the blues because that was what I needed to do until I was done. It took me a while to be done. Funny thing. I got to the funeral and found out my older half sister was there to be with us. We had not known each other for many years though we did know of each other since being very young. I was 35 when I first met her in person and I havent been able top travel to see much of her as Elaine has so I hear things second hand most of the time about her. I hope this will change for all of us and be able to see one another more often in the years to come. That is, if we have years coming up. The death of my dear friends here has made me think a lot of mortality and what I have done wrong and right in raising my own kids. Some times I think I have failed poorly as they tend to travel down some of the same paths I did way back when. But both Tom and Naomi would always say that I was doing very good and I had been thru to much to stop now. Today I have my best friend , my sister, and her husband Tommy whom I wish we were better friends with. But were good for now. I am still searching for my Big Brother Terry who was my idol growing up as Tom was for many others. Our kids all get along famously. Yet what I will miss most is the little locking finger gags, the remote control helicopter flying around my head by surprise, and the bottle rockets being show the the middle of my legs only to turn back and see Tom and Naomi laughing like hell and Tom saying, Boy do I have another one for us to play on someone else!!! And we did. I look at their deaths being so close together as a message of true love and partnership. They had that together as they brought us bread from behind the Publix. I loved when they bantered about who could tell the story right no matter what the story was. I also believe that it would have been way to harsh to have one without the other because the pain would be felt by everybody as well as the survivor and deep down nobody wanted that. So as I carry on with participating in the politics Tom and I totally agreed with each on I will regret nothing of the very fond memory I have of both of them even when we all were sharing Naomi Stories and holding down our laughter because she was in the next room. And did he have some stories. And if I had a dream it would have to be to find a woman that loved my as much as she did Tom and end up just like them. The are living proof there is good news in a day when all we are getting fed is so bad. Yet you enriched my life in many ways. I loved you Tom & Naomi.
Posted on: Thu, 27 Mar 2014 23:47:00 +0000
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