August 8, 2013 ·
Thursday, August 8th, 2013 – Three Years ago

Life can really throw you a curve ball and nail you in the nut sack hard. It is our 20th wedding anniversary yesterday day and it started out ok, same scene, as usual worked my cases, did my callbacks, sent email, got a call from a friend that usually doesn’t call. I asked what was going, and he said there was no other way to say it but that one of our friends had died earlier that morning.

I am in complete shock, I don’t know how long I stood in the conference room; my friend had given me two numbers to call to assist with the horrendous news. I called Mark first and he was beside himself, he asked what was the cause of the death, I told him what our friend told me and he was shocked as much as I was, and all of sudden I burst out crying uncontrollable crying because it hit me like someone had taken a metal baseball bat to my kidneys and hit them out of the park on a homerun.

I let him go composed myself and call our second friend Blair who took it almost has hard as I did I explained as much as I could and suggested he keep in touch and to contact our friend’s family so we could be updated to when the services would be. I then contacted Wade our third friend, let him know what was going on same suggestion I gave Blair and let him go. I sat there in tears for what seemed like hours and in fact in was two hours and a box a Kleenex. I drove home numb, it was my 19th wedding anniversary and I was numb. My wife knew a friend of mine had passed away I don’t think however she realized the amount of time the friendship was or how we were connected.

Best way to describe us back then? You remember the Hobbit, The Fellow ship of the ring? Yea we were like that, Chris, Desiree, Me, John Mark, Robert, Wade. That’s what it was like for us, even though we all recently reconnected (within the last 4 to 5 yrs.) through MySpace and Facebook, we still have that connection like it was yesterday at Round table Pizza back in Santee, we had our table, books, paper, pens and pencils, pizza, pitchers of soda, rolling 20 Sided die praying for a Natural 18/20 and then one of us is gone and that space just cannot be filled no matter how hard you try, it just cannot be filled. I’m still dazed and numb, people are talking to me or at least I think they talked to me. I couldn’t pay much attention.
Chris Dawson was a guy who would ask “What’s eating you, you look like someone stole your J-box Chili fries.” Would sit down and just start talking with you and by the end of the lunch break you feel better, you made a new friend that was able to listen to you and tell you to pull your head out of your butt and move forward and try to forget the problem at hand for the time being till we can get resolution for it.

He’s one of those people that would get up get in a car and drive to pick you up at a bar even though they had no license and only barley knew how to drive. He had a great if slight a skewed sense of humor, he’d make you laugh, and he had that type of personality. He also didn’t take crap from anyone either. If you pissed him off? You’d know it he’d tell you to your face and if you were in the wrong better apologize. But he was decent human being, a good man, I’m sorry he didn’t get married and had children, I had hoped for that to have happened for him. He is truly missed and his passing has saddened me and our fellowship. Someone asked me today while walking down the hall, “Why do you look so sad? Isn’t a great day?” I retorted back with, “Can you bring my friend back to life?” he said no, and I replied then that is why it’s not a great day…..

Rest my friend,
Know that even though you have been taken away from us,
You do deserve peace.

Christopher Dawson
R.I.P
Son
Brother
Friend
8-7-2013