The sun was dusty gold and setting behind the coastal mountains, over exposing the world, when I pull off at the back entrance to Sears Point Raceway to think.  I was on my way back from Davis where I had seen my dog, my Sparky, for the last time.  The sweetest dog I have ever know, unquestioning love on four legs, was in so much pain that he was too vicious to hug, let alone get a muzzle on him.

In a few hours we would get the call that he had a a ruptured disc in his spine and that his spinal cord had degenerated to liquid.  He was in constant pain when he was awake but they had sedated him and he was still asleep.  They told us they could make sure he didn't wake up again, that he never had to be in pain again, but that would mean we would never see him again.

Laurie, Nick and I agreed that we never wanted him to feel pain like that again.  We formed a circle and hugged each other hard.  We cried the kind of tears that only come from real life coming to call, wrapping us in its her arm.  Those arms felt warm as a summer afternoon and cold as a winter night at the same time.

That phone call was in the future when the Passat shut down and I called my friend Blake Tatum.  We  had been discussing the new situation, the fact that no one had heard from my best friend Jeff Canfield.  Jeff lived alone in Oakland, quietly and kind of secretly. He had missed a call to his Mom the previous Thursday and she had told Laurie that she had a bad feeling.

It is not a good thing when a mother has a bad feeling about their only son.

I had been doing a racing magazine of sorts with Blake for about 3 and a half years.  That would end suddenly, without warning, in a few months and as of this writing I still do not know the details.  That too was all in the future as I sat there watching the sun go down.  At that moment, radio off and the only sound being the hiss of radials on the river road as cars oblivious to me and my thought sped past.  At that moment Blake was a good friend, a former cop and he and I shared a dreadful secret.  Blake had told me to send the Oakland Police to Jeff's condo to have a look.  I knew what the were going to find, Blake knew what we they were going to find.  I held out hope that Jeff had been so depressed that he had just gone for a drive, taking his cameras off on the road he loved, going to points unknown like he had done before.  It was a faint hope but it was all I had. Blake told me it would take time for the police to complete the search and that I could call him if I needed to.

I pestered the Oakland Police switchboard all night.  I sent text messages and I tried to be numb. Other people might say they "tried to be strong" but I knew that was not the path I needed just then. If I made myself strong I would have to feel and I wasn't ready for that.  I needed to be numb, not the numb that comes out of a bottle but the numb that comes from inside.  The numb that comes from not allowing yourself to acknowledge that what was happening was real. When I finally got the report from the police that night they said there was no response to their knock at the door and his car was in its parking space.

They found him the next morning at 9AM, dead in his apartment. I didn't go down to be there when they opened the apartment and I still feel guilty about that.

In two days I had lot my two best friends.  Sparky, who through everything that had gone before was vessel of unrelenting joy and love.  Jeff, my wingman in every sense of the word for most of my life. When they found Jeff I knew that I had to stay numb, I also knew that change wasn't coming, it was here.