Death of a friend: There is a time to laugh and a time to weep

“On the death of a friend, we should consider that the fates through confidence have devolved on us the task of a double living, that we have henceforth to fulfill the promise of our friend's life also, in our own, to the world.” 
― Henry David Thoreau

Today one of the nicest people I’ve ever known, David Gumbleton died.

You hear that a lot after a person dies, “so and so was a good guy,” sometimes it becomes cliche. But if you would have me last week who was one of the nicest, kindest, most happy person I’d met, Gumby would have been on the short list, if not at the top. I knew him for five years only, but I’m grateful for the time I spent with him as a co-worker, roommate and friend.

I wasn’t as close to him as some of his friends, but he never made me feel that way. In the last few years it was too bad that I didn't have the chance to see him as often, but since I had been busy at newspapers and he had spent time in China it wasn't on purpose. He just loved adventures, including the one of that took him out west to national park this past summer.

Still when it was his birthday last year, he took time to message me individually to party he was having, not send out a mass text or invite, but let me know I was invited personally. Call me old fashioned but that's something people can overlook to do sometimes. 

When I got the party at his house he handed everyone who walked in a cup for the keg of good beer he had in the living room and when I tried to pay said something along the lines, “Your money is no good here.”

He just wanted everyone to have as much fun as he was having. If there was one thing in his life David knew how to do, it was to have fun.  

It’s strange right now in a one room motel, that I’m alone, 150 miles away from where I met Gumby. Strange because I have no one to talk to in person about this, and I’m just left with my thoughts. When I got Rheila on the phone earlier I cried, and she said it would be good idea to write down my memories of Gumby. She said he wouldn’t want me to be sad, but to do what I enjoy doing. To live my life as he would. 

So that’s what I’m going to try to do. Even though I’m supposed to be a “writer” and I love to write, I feel like my words so far are awkward and haven’t done justice to David. So I’m just going to let the memories flow.

I met Gumby at Bilbo’s Pizza, where we both worked as cooks. He was a couple of years younger than me, but he didn’t seem to be. In fact, I was shocked when I found out he was younger because part of him always seemed like some old wise hippie, or someone who had been to the top of a mountain. He seemed to have figured out how to be happy in life.  

When work was slow, we would take dough and play “Bozo Buckets” with old pizza dough, throwing it across the kitchen into the large, medium and small pizza trays. Of course this tended to get one of two of us in trouble once in a while with the managers, but that didn’t stop him from later teaching me how to juggle. Which I practiced at work. With balls made out of pizza dough.

Needless to say I got fired.

I still saw him off and on again for a couple of years while I was working at a different bar. He lived with several others of our friends and I would stop by from time to time and happen to see him. It wasn’t until I moved away from Kalamazoo and then decided to come back again that I really got a chance to spend time with Gumby a lot again.

I had just decided to reapply myself and go back to school after taking a year off working at a dead end job in St. Joseph. Luckily there was a job in Kzoo and I got the chance to move back there. Because of more luck, there was an open room in the house that he was living in on Austin Street with a another friend, Andrew.

Living there was my last real college experience, and Gumby was a great roommate in a not always so clean living situation.  When I moved in the kitchen was such a mess that no one would really want to go in there, even to mircowave pizza rolls. Bilbo's boxes were stacked up to the ceiling and I don't think we owned a vacuum. One good thing was that I'm really glad to live in a state where you get 10 cents for bottle returns.  

Andrew and I were really the reason the house was a mess. Still Gumby never got upset, and once in a while he would do all the dishes, even though we made the mess and the kitchen would be clean…for a couple of days.

Gumby loved animals and he joked that we had a pet raccoon that lived in a tree in front of the house. He used to leave out left over pizza for the animal so it would have something to eat during the winter. That changed when one day he parked under the tree and the animal must have eaten too many pizza crusts; it made the biggest mess on Gumby’s car windshield I have ever seen. It could have put 100 seagulls to shame. 

But through both of those situations, he never let it get to him. He would just smile and laugh and say something like "that's how it goes."

Another funny story is how we didn’t have garbage service at the house, just a trash bin that no one ever paid for. One night after the bar I walked home buzzed and came into the house annoyed because there was trash everywhere.

“That’s it,” I said. “We’re taking it to the dumpster.” He just laughed but he jumped off the couch to help me. 

As I ran up the hill to the WMU trash bin carrying a full rolling garbage can of trash Gumby ran right next me, keeping “lookout” for police. He had been playing a recorder he found (that little flute like thing kids play in second grade) and brought it with him, playing the one song he knew as I pulled the heavy can. After we illegally dumped it in a WMU dumpster we ran back down the hill, the clang of the empty garbage bin thudding in time with the flute as he played it. For years afterwards we talked about that night, never getting tired of how funny it was.

I was amazed at the energy he had. He would play soccer, rock climb and ride his bike even when he had to work doubles at work. He was generous too, I remember how he would let me borrow his bike when I felt that I needed a little exercise or when I wanted to go to the lake by our house and not drive. 

He was happy to bring me along when I asked if I could go rock climbing with him. I went twice with him and both were great days. I had trouble climbing like he did, because I was 260 pounds trying to pull myself up the tiny grips wasn't as easy as for me as someone as athlectic as he was. Still, he was patent as he showed me what paths to take and what grips to hold onto the beginners wall. 

At the end of that day I still hadn't been able to complete a whole "course" up a wall, but he assured me I would be able to get to the top if I worked hard at it and made calm, fluid moves. He stood at the bottom of the wall and shouted encouragement, I can still remember the song that way playing through the speakers at Climb Kalamazoo at that moment , by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs.

He cheered for me to get to the top that day at Climb Kalamazoo, but  also in my enrolling in classes again WMU. He was postitive for me when I started to work at MLive and when he heard the everyday struggles that everyone sometime goes through in life. Sometimes you start to notice things when you live with someone, like how they react when you tell them my grandma just died or a fight I had with with girlfriend.

So really, isn’t that what being a good friend should mean, always being there to cheer you on to get to the top?

Now that he’s gone I’m in shock, but when I think about him, When I think about every time he smiled or laughed or said something funny, I smile. Part of me feels guilty for grinning or laughing out loud in this little motel when I’m so sad for for his family and friends who will miss him so much.

I’m sad that he's gone way too damn soon. But I’m also really happy he’s a person who loved life and enjoyed it to the fullest. I'm lucky I got to meet and spend time with him even for a little while. Knowing Gumby makes me want to be go forward living my life more like he did.