the elephant in the big leather chair

  the elephant in the big leather chair




    Like many of his family and friends I ponder the early departure of my dear friend and I have come to a strange conclusion. Of course. his love of alcoholic beverages was crucial in the liver disease that took him from us. While we can say we wish he was more temperate and that if he had listened to the early signs of damage we could have had more years of his delightful humor.  I have to conclude he got his money's worth in life and that included whiskey, wine and early morning bloody marys. There are many lines of dialogue in literature that address the problem but in my mind Greg was happier when he was free to imbibe. Sure, he could have probably lived another ten years if he had been a teetotaler but those would have been the worst ten years of his life. I give this unpopular opinion also based on the fact that he was rarely obviously drunk and was a 180 degrees away from a mean drunk. He was fun when he was high.

"Oh, drunks get drunk and so it seems

That drunkards go to great extremes

But there has yet to be a perfectly straight line"

 - Drinking Song Loudon Wainwright III

The man so enjoyed tippling it was in his blood in more ways than one. Ed mentioned his loved hobby of visiting Santa Anita where the fresh air, glorious view, and sight of magnificent race horses was begun with a pop of vodka and tomato juice from a bartender whose name he knew by heart. So also, after a drive in the pre-dawn darkness to LAX for flights east he went bloody also. He delighted in martinis, not so much for the taste but for the sophisticated mood of the imbibing in the distinctive glass. Of course, Canadian Mist was at his right hand for too many years and he just loved a nice red wine. Abstinence was something he would not consider and there is an old Irish saying that "there were people on the Titanic who pushed away their pudding" He lived every day like it was his last one and one day it was.  In our mats on Francis he did let what was left of his hair down and gush about how fortunate he was and how much he loved the life he lived. While he may not have been a touchy-feely guy he adored his wife and kids as much as a man's heart is capable. To be absolutely frank I hated the last couple of years of sober Greg because he was not the man I loved so much. The twinkle in his dark eyes was gone and the joy was lost inside his troubled thoughts. 



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