Josh

 

My husband's best friend of 37 years, Josh, died a week ago, very unexpectedly and abruptly.  We had his service today, with military honors, and I was going to speak on Charles's behalf at the celebration of life afterwards, as I did not want to do so at the actual service itself.  That never happened, because no one made a move to do so before we left and quite frankly, I was not going to bug his family about it because it was not about me anyways.  I am going to put it here, however, so my husband can come back and look at these words whenever he needs to.

For those of you who do not know me, my name is Laura.  My husband is Charles, Josh's best friend of 37 years.  When we got the news that Josh had passed away, Holly asked me if Charles would want to speak.  He said no, but asked me to do so for him.  I agreed, and then promptly panicked.  What am I supposed to say about a man like Josh that is not going to come out as trite, canned, and overused?  Being the self respecting Xiennial that I am, I turned to the internet for ideas, specifically social media.  Here are a list of words that various people used to describe him:

Friend.

Shit-eating grin.

Good man.

Hard working.

Stubborn.

Fun.

Family.

Softy.

There was one word, however, that was in nearly every post that I scoured about him.  

Love.

Josh loved completely, with his whole heart.  I got to witness 19 out of 37 years of his and Charles's friendship.  Most people do not have this kind of friendship.  They were truly more like brothers.  As Holly said, they probably talked to each other more than they did to me or Holly.  After Josh died, Charles told me he estimated that they talked to each other about once a week.  When I told Holly this, her response was exactly what mine was. "Once a week?  More like daily."

Because Charles loved me, so did Josh.  He accepted me without question, because I made his boy happy.  I am not going to tell stories about their shenanigans.  Mostly because some were *just* this side of legal, plus I am not sure what Timmy and Peggy know or don't know and I am NOT going to be the one to tell them.

Brendan, JJ, and Libby...you kids were his life.  I remember every year after fair, your dad would start grumbling about how "we're not getting any animals again next year".  And every year, I told Charles I wanted to put money down on how many cows, goats, sheep, pigs you were going to get.  He did this because he knew it would benefit you.  Every thing he did was for your benefit.  Even when you would fight with him, he wanted the best for you and was fighting with you to get it for you because he wanted you to succeed.  And I think that he did a pretty phenomenal job of it.

I will say, this world will never be the same without Josh in it.  But we sure can make it a better place if we all loved like he did.  We'll miss you beyond words.  Don't worry, Josh, I'll take care of him for you.