Very early this morning I found myself in a kind of half-wakeful, half slow-moving liminal dream. The sun hadn’t risen yet. I felt something opaque, something solid hovering above me. A wall of lead? A rubber barrier of some kind with a tire-like consistency? A massive block of black ice? It was, as strange thoughts often go, none of those things. But a decision had to be made. That, I was sure of. I knew I needed a way to pierce each one of them—to see beyond them, to poke holes through them in hopes of letting a shaft of light come through to brighten the dimness.

And what was dim? Well, for one, the idea that a dear friend of mine—a truly brilliant musician whose funeral I was to attend later in the day was gone. His name is … or do I say “was”? I’ll stay with is for a while, if only because I prefer the sound of it, and because he feels so alive for me even now. Even now, after I’ve returned home, after shoveling dirt on his casket—the dirt that is still stuck in the treads of my shoes.

His name is Richard. Richard Friedman.

I hadn’t expected to cry while the eulogies were being read. Not even while knowing Richard was no longer alive, no longer pouring out his music and his........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)