FULL TITLE: A Moment of Reflection on the Ascent to Valhalla

While not an entirely new piece, it's one that I've had waiting around for some deeper meaning to appear to me. Now is that time.

A few weeks ago, while I was sick, I got a phone call from my daughter to tell me that an old friend, Slammy, was dying and only had a few weeks to live.
Slammy died on Monday of liver cancer, he was 41. I only got to see him a couple of times before he went home to Whakatane and his whanau (family) to die. Being sick myself it seemed pretty inconsiderate to turn up to see a dying man and give him the flu.

Slammy was part of my old life and I hadn't seen him much over the past 10 years - when my ex and I split I pretty much gave up all my friends and cohorts, such was the depth of enmity between me and her. I just walked away. The only thing that has kept me even slightly connected was my now 11-year-old daughter and having her stay every second weekend.

A firm believer in Valhalla and its kind Slammy was one of those funny people you meet in your life. A top bloke, great friend, always nice and smiling, could drink like a bastard and great to have a chinwag with. We both used to be roadies for a local band called Sticky Filth and spent a lot of time travelling all over New Zealand in the back of a van, FUBAR and loving it.
I will always remember our distance spitting contest in the hallway of a nightclub/hotel in Gisborne (won by the owner of the nightclub by the way!), playing Dungeons and Dragons tripping on mushrooms for three days straight (Slammy always played a bad-tempered dwarf with an ornery streak a mile wide) and many other varied (and usually fucked-up) adventures.
My ex, for whatever reason, took him in for the last few weeks he stayed here in New Plymouth before going home. It made visiting him and seeing him off very difficult, but worthwhile. I will always have fond memories of Slammy, but like I said, didn't see much of him over the past decade. It's left a strange, sad, reflective feel in my heart. A life I left a decade ago has come back to touch me in the most profound and disturbing way.

It's also reminded me that walking away from that lifestyle was probably the best move I made in my life.


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