I've posted before about my best friend, ElJefe. I've posted a lot of times about him, but I am too lazy to look for anymore posts.

We've been friends since roughly 1996. I had moved to a town where I knew no one. He was one of the first people I met. I determined he was someone I didn't want to lose touch with, and so I made it my personal mission to stay in touch with him.

And more than a decade later, we talk almost daily. We've both gotten married. We've supported each other. We've kicked each other's asses. We've been good friends to each other.


Yesterday morning, he called to tell me a story. And he usually calls around 8:30 in the morning, weekends included, to tell me 'stories'. I wasn't prepared for this one:

He and his friend went to the river on Sunday. They got into some trouble on the river. They got tossed out of their boat at a place where there's a headgate - swirling water, big hole, that pretty much sucks you and everything into it. They were fighting against getting pulled in.

ElJefe said he looked over and saw his friend with "real tears" in his eyes. And he said, "I thought, 'Man, he thinks he's gonna drown! And then it occurred to me that no, he thinks I'M gonna drown! I looked back and saw I was five feet from the point of dying, and realized he was right'".

They got out, but watched everything get sucked into this hole: the boat, the oars, the cooler, everything. They said it took two hours to get the boat back out. It would suck the boat into the headgate for thirty minutes, and spit it out, and suck it back in. They said they recovered one oar and the boat, but everything else was gone and NEVER SEEN AGAIN.

Later, they found out a mutual friend's high school buddy had died there. Body never recovered.

That almost was ElJefe. His buddy told him later that they were going down together; he wasn't going to let him go. And I believe it truly. They have been friends since elementary school. They love each other like brothers. ElJefe has always said he has that friend and me - and we are the two best friends he has.

And I'm thankful on all accounts for the way Sunday turned out. I'm thankful they had enough upper body strength to get out. I'm thankful they had angels on their side. I am completely and totally thankful my best friend is still alive.

I told him I couldn't imagine a world without him in it, and I meant that sincerely. So thank you to the friend with him, thank you to whomever or whatever else reached out and kept my friend alive. He was meant for more than this.


ElJefe and My Bug, 2004

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things that give value to survival." ~C.S. Lewis

Labels: eljefe, friendship, love thursday