With a little help from my friend

Ahh, the return to school from spring break. Well, maybe it's more like ugh. Going to class Monday was rough, given the nonstop activities of my spring break. Thirty-plus hours in the car, passing through seven states, weather varying from 70 degrees and sunny to 30 degrees and snow. I'm still not exactly sure where I am right now, but then again, that's nothing new.\nIn my travels, I stopped home for a night or two. I had to pay a little visit to my friend's family. During the week before spring break, my friend lost his father. While we're not as close as we used to be, our families have remained close and his father, Larry, was a good friend of mine. This made midterms even more difficult than usual, dealing with my tests as well as the passing of a friend. Larry was the first person I have really known who passed away.\nSure, my grandfather died, but I was only 3 when it happened, so I don't remember him. I have a small family, so the odds of someone passing away are a bit smaller, thankfully. So, this recent occurrence was hard to deal with.\nAt first I was in shock. For the rest of the night, I couldn't wrap my mind around the truth of what had happened. He had been sick, so it wasn't a sudden death, but I never really thought that it would get this bad, even when he had fallen into a coma. After that first night, the shock subsided. It was like I knew he passed away, but I didn't know he passed away.\nThen came the visit during spring break. That's when everything started to hit home. I went by the house for about an hour, and he wasn't there. It was odd to me because I was so used to seeing him there every time I stopped by. But he wasn't there, and isn't going to be there again. Since I have never dealt with this before, it is weird.\nI think part of the reason this bond with Larry developed was that he was unlike any of my friends' fathers. Larry was a teenager trapped in a 50 year old's body. \nOne of my favorite memories of him happened about 10 years ago, when we had a barbecue at my house. All of the kids had water guns and were running about the yard squirting each other, acting like typical 10 year olds. Larry decided he should participate, so he got a bucket, filled it with water and chased us around with it, getting us pretty soaked. \nThe next thing that happened is straight out of the sitcoms. He threw the water at me just as I moved out of the way; the water soaked my dad instead. My dad got pretty angry, but everything was smoothed out in the end. But this story shows the type of guy Larry was, fun-loving and not ready to give up on acting young.\nEvery time I stopped by, I expected to get ripped on for any number of reasons. One of his favorite things to give me a hard time about was majoring in some "profession where you get paid less than managing a McDonald's." He would call me out on things my parents would call me out on, too, such as grades or class selection, but it was different. You expect that from your parents, but you don't always get that from a friend.\nThat is part of the reason his passing is such a loss. I liked having that outside perspective, someone who would always be brutally honest about what he thought about what I was doing. And it wasn't always criticism; I could go to him for advice and he would also congratulate me for things he thought I did well. I stop at calling him a second father, because I never saw him that way. But he was more than a friend.\nThe thing I think about now isn't the typical, "Oh, I wish I could have told him how I felt before he passed." I don't think that would have done him justice. \nInstead, I remember the last time we talked, during winter break. We were discussing what I had planned for the summer, if I would stay here at IU or go back home. He told me I should at least come home for a while this summer, because he wanted to hear "how many times you've been arrested" this semester. \nLarry, I haven't been arrested yet, but I'll keep you posted.