gone but not forgotten

So, awhile back (4th of July, 2008) my best friend was killed in a car accident.  I was stuck in Honduras working in the Peace Corps and basically couldn't do a damn thing for anyone back home, and I wasn't near anybody who had any idea who he was who I felt comfortable leaning on for support.  That was a rough time.

I'm not even sure why I'm writing this anymore.  I stumbled across a couple of his comments left on rockpapershotgun.com on an old post about an indie game, and I guess I remembered that I still haven't been home to Texas since well before he died.  Haven't talked to his family at all, haven't talked to more than one or two of my friends from there since it happened, haven't seen his grave.  I asked my dad to go to his funeral in my stead, said it was a nice funeral.  And I forget how I know it, but I know he has a Star Wars: Galaxies game manual with him in his coffin.  I bet he'd have a good laugh over that one.  We both liked them Bothemz.  It was a great game, and a horribly (charmingly) flawed game when it came out, and for awhile afterwards.  For some reason he and I never actually played MMOs on the same server.  I think the timing of choosing a server was off for SWG, and with WoW, my guild from SWG basically put me in a position of choosing to game with them or game with Cruz and HIS guild from SWG who I didn't know, so I chose to play with the people I never see outside of the game and spend non-WoW time with my real life friend.

But I digress.

I was writing because I don't have anyone left that I can say "Dude, remember that time when I had a random leftover bottle of tequila in my trunk from my trip to New Orleans, and we finished it off before going into Steak & Shake at some odd nighttime hour?"  Or remember that time when we had any other bajillion virtual adventures or told any of the other bajillion jokes no one else was around for?

That bites.

He even died before he got to play Left 4 Dead.  It's strangely appropriate, but that's the thing that nags at me most, only barely more than his plans for his girlfriend and college and life in general.  He was looking forward to a zombie co-op game like no game before it.  He loved zombies like the rest of us, but he was a huge fan of co-op gaming for the last few years of his life.  We did the Splinter Cell games at the time together... but that was really all that was out at the time.  He missed this whole co-op renaissance we're seeing now with Borderlands and Left 4 Dead and all the others.

That's just salt in the wound, I guess.