Ed, you're my 102nd post ...

The world has one more spirit in it. Ed Welch is gone. Goodbye Ed.

Lily sits at my feet and I watch her paws twitch and I remember him. His face and hair and funny lisp and stories about Kansas and motorcycles and bikers in bars sloshing beer and Jack Daniels into fists with grime under the nails. Tattoos. His stories from Vietnam rush back.

I hear him. At least once a week I hear him say something and from my memory comes his voice while I drive or work or take notes or get ready for a photo. I hear him.

I remember things he said. Odd that I remember how we stood in my old apartment one Saturday morning in Shelton and he fidgeted.

What happened? I had asked him where he was or what was wrong. I had not seen him in a few days.

You gotta understand, he said, it's the PTSD.

He didn't really do well with the world around him. He was critical and scathing. He grumbled and criticized and would berate those closest to him, and he would do it with volume. He pushed, shoved, drank and yelled, but years later he also apologized. He suffered his own losses and frustrations and some of us stood by him because we knew he hurt, and we loved him.

He took care of people, even if he complained out loud and often. He would be at his aunt's house at 4:30 every day despite weather fatigue or work. She needed him.

I remember he told me about post traumatic stress. I wondered, does that make you weird? Does it make you unable to call me on the phone? Does it make you and me a bad idea? But I wasn't going to walk away just because I couldn't find him for a few days.

He was also funny and endearing, and at times insightful. He had been most places before I was born, including Vietnam.

He laughed a lot, so I figured he knew how to suffer too.

War robbed many things from him, and replaced them with anger. But he loved his niece and everyone knew it. He was good to her. Now the earth has him back and I didn't even know until too late.