Robert Suggs (January 29, 2001)[extracted from the thread "Long Absence and Sad Return"]I honestly hadn't intended to share this. At the risk of seeming exploitative, I will do so with a careful disclaimer. About a week after learning of our loss of Johnny, I was up late as usual on the Net. And I pulled up a number of his old posts in the deja archive. The last year I was largely absent here, and cheated myself of that final 12 months of his wit; and that hurts as much as anything. So I toddled off to bed with rbadac on the mind, and was in the twilight of slumber when I seemed to hear his laughter in a dream, just above me. Immediately I was awakened, however, by my wife springing up suddenly in bed. "What did you hear?" I asked her curiously. She replied uncertainly that she felt it was a flock of birds.
We drifted off again, but the next day I asked her for another description, without telling her my dream. She said, "All I can compare it to is a flock of birds, but I don't know--it was directly over me, not outside."
Then I told her about rbadac's laugh, which also seemed just inches away. To me it was simply amusing (I mark the whole thing up to the squirrels in our attic, to be honest; that's my disclaimer) because I had the thought that I always knew what Johnny looked like, from his video, but he never knew what I looked like. I was always able to ridicule his appearance in our mutual taunt-athons; I can easily imagine him having a hover to check ME out after all this time, since he never made it down to Atlanta, and letting loose a guffaw. ~HA ha ha ha!~
The bottom line is that I don't know where he is now, but I know he would enjoy the hell out of such a story--is it Johnny or is it Memorex. Or is it squirrels?--and that, in turn, makes me hear his laughter again. I hope I always will.
Rob