Thanks for dropping by. I had made a previous post in regard to writing for myself, and I think this is a prime example. I do hope you enjoy this post, but it was not written for you. If you were friends or family of Randy, and happen to stumble upon this post, I hope the fact his existence was not forgotten by someone else provides you some comfort.
My friend Randy lost his life, just when it was getting started. I had just enlisted in the Air Force, and had only been in tech school a few months, when I learned that he was tragically thrown from the bed of a truck in an automobile accident. Ironically during my stint at Keesler AFB, near Biloxi Mississippi, I had taken several road trips to New Orleans in the bed of a truck.
Randy was a wayward kid, and had a troubled home life. He would hang out at my family home quite a bit to escape, and even went with us on a family vacation. I thought about him from time to time after his passing. Despite my effort to find an obituary, or learn of his final resting place, I had no luck for several years. I was planning to pass through my old home town of Riverside, California in 2012, and I thought I'd give him a quick search to see if there was any new information floating around on the Internet. To my absolute joy, less than a year prior, a random volunteer named Mister Bill had cataloged his grave at Findagrave.com. From his simple snapshot, I was able to actually see his headstone, and even better, I knew his grave sat along a fence line behind some railroad tracks. Thank you Mister Bill!
When the time finally came for visiting my childhood home, I paid a visit to Olivewood Cemetery, and after about an hour of wandering the fence line, I found my friend. I have to say it was a moment of catharsis for me. An entire 18 years had passed, and here I was at the final resting place of my friend. I left a little bouquet of flowers, and I sat for a while and reminisced in silence, before continuing on my journey.
Today was one of those random days I thought about you. When you died, the World Wide Web was nothing but a curiosity. There was no social media. People didn't carry around a portal to the sum of all human knowledge in their pocket. The only evidence of your existence I could find in this digital world, was the result of a good Samaritan.
So here I am, over 25 years after your death, memorializing you on a system connected to a network that was a mere glimmer of potential when you passed. Here's to you Randy Cathcart, your memory lives on with me, and now on one more spot in this digital realm that now occupies so much of my time.
Your passing at such a young age, is in part, the reason I strive to make the most out of every day,
