The News of Your Death Disturbed Me

On December 14th of this year, I heard about the death of a friend who's been living in Ohio. The cause? Something bled out. So far, I've heard it was the esophagus and the liver. Who knows if it might have been something else.
This friend became my friend as a couple. The older half of the couple was more attentive, verbal, communicative... In other words, this one seldom picked up the phone when it rang.
The one who was left behind was younger. He also had more untreated trauma. "Like what?" you're probably wondering. Well, for starters, his Klan-member daddy went after him with a rifle when the child said he was gay at age 15. The mama probably would have wanted to pray the gay away with tongues. The father just wanted the faggot dead.
Needless to say, he approached the person who seemed most approachable and the rest was history.
I met them through a magazine article. They were part of the animal rescue community. In the mid 1980s it was fashionable to have a potbellied pig for a pet. Folks didn't know that the pigs would grow (even though they were advertised as miniatures). Yeah, yokel, MINIATURE PIGS. That's like getting miniature elephant or miniature giraffe and thinking they would fit in your handbag!
They were vegetarians and their animal rescue help extended to different forms of wildlife. They had chickens, geese, a turkey, horses, a cow, llamas, farm hogs, turtles, cats, dogs, a reptile, ducks. You get the picture

AGAIN... MORE LATER