My Planting Buddy, Brad Colwell, Is Gone

I received an e-mail from Shawn today, one of my tree planting buddies. He's living in Edmonton now and had been working with another ex-planter, Brad Colwell. Shawn told me he had a call last night from Brad's ex-girlfriend, saying Brad had been hit by a truck and was in bad condition. Shawn then called Brad's cell phone, but a Police Officer answered, informing Shawn that Brad didn't make it. Shawn couldn't breath and the officer was very patient as it took over a minute for Shawn to catch his breath. My friend died last night. It didn't feel real at first, but I've known for about two hours now and it is starting to sink in. I've spent the last two hours contacting whoever I could through e-mail, facebook, and msn. I'll let you know a little about Brad, and what it is like to know someone in the woods, tree planting. When you go away and meet a whole new set of people they become your temporary social network. Some of them you stay in contact with and others you don't, but this does not denote any sense of respect or interest in those people. When you live in the woods with someone for three months out of a summer, at the end you often exchange information without ever getting around to talk with them until the following season when you pick up right where you left off. I met a lot of people in the woods, and I can talk to them any time as if we never missed a beat. Brad is one of the planters that I have kept the most contact with, but our contact is, or was, not all that frequent. At the end of the season you chat on msn a few times per week, maybe every day, and then you cut it back to once a week or even once every few months. I've been talk to Brad probably less than 20 times this year, but the last time I was talk to him was two nights ago, and for that reason his passing feels really strange. Brad used the term "friendly" very fluently, in just. The beginning of our conversations would often go like this: Brad: Hello friendly friend. What are you up to? David: Nothing much, just writing a blog Brad: Oh, that sounds very friendly of you. It made me smile. I wish I could remember more about our last conversation, but it doesn't really matter now. All I remember is asking him about his new friendly friend. He asked me how I knew but then answered his own question in the same sentence. "Ahhh, facebook." I had noticed his profile picture had a new girl in it. He asked about London and I told him i was living just outside London now in a smaller town. he told me that our friend Jason was travelling Europe and would be leaving from London next week. I wouldn't be able to get in I told him, and he said jay would probably come out to where I am. I wasn't going to contact Jay, but I think I might now, although he will probably be in a hurry to get back for Brads funeral. They were both from New Brunswick and were close. Retrospect is a curious thing isn't it? All the what ifs, but here I am in the present, and I am only happy that I had a decent conversation with him the day before he left. Lately I've been learning about the frailty of life, and just how temporary these days are. How important our choices are when you line them up in the span of eternity. I believe this physical time we have on earth is only a blip, but in that blip we decide the course of our souls, and we also have the choice to affect the course of others. Yesterday I was skateboarding down the sidewalk and as the cars drove by I considered my safety, and what if I hit a rock while I was about to push and somehow I fell just enough to the left that I collided with a car. It is that easy. My last client had an extreme sports injury, and I don't want to give too much detail as my job requires confidentiality, but he made me reflect on my life. I thought about Dawe and his brushes with death. How he should have died in hospital during a long period of silence, no change for better or worse. I remember when he came out and we would go snowboarding up behind my house. He said he was so skinny at first that his bum cheeks didn't touch. He made it through, but a year or two later he had a snowboarding accident where he flipped forward and buckled his back, creating a crack in one of his vertebrae. It was cracked on one side, but not all the way across, and he lived through this, and is walking just fine. As I spent time with this client and saw picture of the things he used to do I could only think of Dawe and how this could have been him. It could have been me too I guess. I completely separated my AC joint snowboarding in 2006, and all I was doing was trying to get down the hill. I hooked my edge in and flipped over onto my head and shoulder. Life is so precious, but this doesn't mean I'm not going to live it and take a few risks, it just means I consider which ones to take, at what cost. Did you read my blog a few writings ago about ... I don't remember right now what it was about but I know it was applicable, and on a similar theme. Life is short, and these physical choices are so small, but for some reason we can't seem to see things outside of our own flesh and the windows of our comfortable little castles. Conversation around this town is different than what I talk about with the guys. If I haven't been talking a mutual friend in a while I'll say, "have you been talking to Ricky?", but here they ask, " Is Margarete still alive?" "You know, I don't know. I assume so, though I haven't heard from her in a while." Life is winding down for some, and not everyone is ready to go. I see people who think their existence will stop the moment their heart stops beating, and it's sad, because they don't have many more seasons left to see. I met Brad in 2004, in the woods of British Columbia. he came out tree planting with Miz, Mitch and Ryan, the gang from New Brunswick. Canadians get along well when they find each other out in the world, but east coasters get along even better, and so I soon got to know these guys quite well. You can avoid getting to know someone in the woods, but these guys were a good time, and I remember several conversations I had with Brad. Brad was curious and wanted answers about life. He couldn't understand how his ill-mother could believe in a God that seemed to do nothing for her. Brad read the Bible from cover to cover, that's a task even a lot of Christians haven't completed. I sure haven't, but I'm getting there, almost through 1 Kings now. As a Christian in a planting camp I was presented with lots of conflicting opinion, but rarely any conflict. I remember Brad asking me about a certain area of my belief, something more practical, as in a certain approach I took to life, and a couple weeks later he came to me disappointed. He had tried holding my mindset as well, but it didn't work for him. I guess I'm surprised when people listen to me, or follow my actions. It's hard to picture never seeing him again. I didn't have any plans to go see him, but he lives in Alberta and I have plenty of friends there, plus I want to go back to check out Peace River and all those places I used to go to in my tree planting days. Brad and Shawn worked for the same company in the oil and gas business and their boss had asked me to apply with them while they were in Newfoundland. It's still a consideration, good to know there is a possibility there, but it's not where my heart is right now, even though I had thought about how nice it would be to work with Shawn and Brad. When you live in the woods with someone you know them differently. You all go through the same purification process and experience the same insanity of snow, rain, bugs, wasps and other such nasties. I'll miss Brad, and I really wish I could go to his funeral so that my heart would know he's gone, but I'm going to pretend I was as close to him as his family or Mitch or Miz. I remember when we were in Fort Mac, 2 hours up river in a camp we had to boat to. We were in isolation for 27 days and after the first week I heard Mitch, Brad, and Miz walking past my tent laughing and joking about our misfortune on a contract that terned out to be not only isolated but rubbish as well. Cold, poor prices, 2 hour walks to the block in and out, and flies, so so many black flies. I felt bad for the girls who had to pull their pants down all the way to pee because this place was unhappy. So these three guys are walking past my tent laughing and I hear Miz say, "Geez man, it's only a week in and we're already at each others throats! It's like we're three Beta fish trapped in the same bowl." I laughed out loud when I heard this and they all turn to my tent and laughed back. We laughed so much those three summers, especially at our misfortune, because it was the best way to deal with it. We sang Karaoke at cowboy Saloons, we ate fast food on days off and watched movies we didn't even like, just to feel normal, and we planted a lot of trees. Some trees were planted better than others, but needless to say we passed and got paid at the end of the day. Brad was 26, and a good time too. I know you are supposed to say all god things about people when they die, but Brad never did anything to upset or annoy me, he was through and through a good guy. I just can't get the tranquility of our last conversation out of my head. Good night folks.