No more enlightened, I paid the bill and we left the restaurant.
Bonnie drove us back to her house, where I declined a coffee; I said I
needed to go home and give this appreciation issue some thought. Not
unkindly, Bonnie said it was about time I had a crash, and took some time
to assimilate my lessons.
I was in no mood to assimilate anything other than beer, but moods
can change. Within the hour, my feelings took a back seat to the only thing
that probably could have displaced them on this day.
Minutes after I arrived home from my lessons on greed, cruelty and
probably general crimes against humanity that I had yet to recognize, Ed
phoned to say that after one =heroic measure‘ resuscitation, over which
Paul Koenig was thoroughly pissed, he died again, this time for good. I
left a message with Bonnie‘s daughter that I was going out of town, and
the next morning I flew to Winnipeg at a cost of about $750.
We buried Paul and returned to Vancouver a few days later, having
said all that could be said to my second family.
The next day, Bonnie and I settled in her upstairs living room for a
chat about recent events, and our conversation soon touched on Paul‘s
annoyance at being =brought back'. Shortly afterwards, I found myself
criticizing Ed's lack of interest in esoteric matters, considering his personal
experiences and background exposure to it. The fervour with which I
presented my views surprised me.
Bonnie was equally surprised at my lack of loyalty to such a good
friend, and she wondered aloud if this was how I spoke of her behind her
back. Shocked that she could think there was malice in my observations, I
said that it was because of my loyalty that I wanted him to continue
learning.
"You want him to learn for selfish reasons," she said. "You need
someone to agree with you when you take your stands for ignorance."
"Selfish? I spent nearly all I had."
"That was entirely self- indulgent."
"Ya–a party;" I scoffed, then forgetting who I was talking to, "You
have no way of knowing this, but when we first became friends and I told
Ed about my father dying, he said he couldn‘t imagine what it would be
like to lose his dad. I vowed then that I would be there for him when that
time came in his life, and I was," I said, missing only the adolescent foot
stomp for emphasis.
