Eulogy for a Friend

"O Finkie, where art thou?  We were just getting started and now you're gone. Good friends don't come easy.

What was so special about our friendship? Did we fight together in battle? Did Ronnie save my life? Did we conquer world together? None of the above. But we shared moments. Little moments maybe, trite, crazy and always childish, even long after we reached adulthood... Actually adulthood barely happened. That's because old friends never have to grow up. That's the beauty of it. Old friends can't impressive each other. There's no dirty secrets. It's all out there and some it stinks. But like Ronnie liked to say, "If it doesn't stink, it's not real." Ronnie liked to say. And together we stunk a lot.

It's not only that I'll always remember our crazy little moments,  like when Ronnie, who was petrified of dogs, smashed his basement window with a shovel because a blind twelve year old Bassett hound was chasing him around the house, or the times we'd go clubbing posing as Hollywood movie producers...there were lots of moments...the moments we relive over, over and over again, the moments that make us laugh at the end of a rough day, the moments that benchmark our lives, the moments that are real.

But what is real can also be harsh , unforgiving, random and often, unfair. And that's what happened to Finkie when he took I'll, and ultimately when he left us. A life cut short before Act two really got going, a life without act three. Thats not supposed to be how the story is supposed to go. We all want a happy ending.

So how can I bid farewell to Ronnie Finkelstein, Finkie, with but a few clumsy words strewn together, fragments of snapshots frozen in time, for mere words cannot do justice to a life lived, one that was real and true.  All ic says that Ronnie Finkelstein was aboy, was a man, who had a friend that will never forget him, that will never let his memory die. And that is enough."