November 22, 2009. Duane would be 47 years old today. And it's still difficult for me to refer to him in past tense. I still think of him in present tense. Maybe it's a form of denial.
What would Duane be doing today? Knowing him, he'd likely be at work, depending on his shift. Holidays and birthdays weren't too terribly important to him, so he tended not to celebrate them. I remember when he first moved to Winnipeg and got a job at Fraser Foods (initially part of a small local chain known as Short Stop Foods) which was a little convenience store on Portage Avenue at Sherburn Street -- he used to volunteer to take the Christmas Day shifts. This was typical of him for as long as I knew him, although when he was in a relationship he would take the time to "celebrate" if it was important to his partner. But for the most part, on his own, it simply wasn't important -- just another day in the life. Even in the last couple of years, after Jo-Anne passed away, we managed to get him over a couple of times for Chritsmas and Thanksgiving but when he couldn't commit it was due to work. Not that he couldn't get the time if he asked for it -- the holidays simply held no particular relevance for him, and if he worked it, that meant one of his co-workers, with a family, would get the time instead. And he always felt that was more important.
The last birthday of his that we celebrated was two years ago. He and Todd and I met at The Great World one cold November after work and ate some Chinese food and talked. I gave him a present: a copy of Rober Caro's Master of the Senate. I'd previously introduced him to the first two volumes of Caro's biography of LBJ, and this completed the set. That was it - no big deal - just friends talking. It was really what he preferred anyway, and you don't need a special occassion for that, and nor should you wait.
Well, I'll close here, with a quote from Tom Waits, as this year's birthday gift to Duane:
"We're running through the graveyard,
And we laugh, my friends and I.
We swore we'd be together
Until the day we'd die,
Until the day we'd die."
-Tom Waits: Innocent When You Dream (from the album Franks Wild Years)
What would Duane be doing today? Knowing him, he'd likely be at work, depending on his shift. Holidays and birthdays weren't too terribly important to him, so he tended not to celebrate them. I remember when he first moved to Winnipeg and got a job at Fraser Foods (initially part of a small local chain known as Short Stop Foods) which was a little convenience store on Portage Avenue at Sherburn Street -- he used to volunteer to take the Christmas Day shifts. This was typical of him for as long as I knew him, although when he was in a relationship he would take the time to "celebrate" if it was important to his partner. But for the most part, on his own, it simply wasn't important -- just another day in the life. Even in the last couple of years, after Jo-Anne passed away, we managed to get him over a couple of times for Chritsmas and Thanksgiving but when he couldn't commit it was due to work. Not that he couldn't get the time if he asked for it -- the holidays simply held no particular relevance for him, and if he worked it, that meant one of his co-workers, with a family, would get the time instead. And he always felt that was more important.
The last birthday of his that we celebrated was two years ago. He and Todd and I met at The Great World one cold November after work and ate some Chinese food and talked. I gave him a present: a copy of Rober Caro's Master of the Senate. I'd previously introduced him to the first two volumes of Caro's biography of LBJ, and this completed the set. That was it - no big deal - just friends talking. It was really what he preferred anyway, and you don't need a special occassion for that, and nor should you wait.
Well, I'll close here, with a quote from Tom Waits, as this year's birthday gift to Duane:
"We're running through the graveyard,
And we laugh, my friends and I.
We swore we'd be together
Until the day we'd die,
Until the day we'd die."
-Tom Waits: Innocent When You Dream (from the album Franks Wild Years)
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