Sing out loud like nobody's listening

Sing with me, sing for the years
Sing for the laughter and sing for the tears
Sing with me, if it's just for today
Maybe tomorrow the good lord will take you away



One year ago this Saturday, we lost a very good friend. Clay was one of Jason's best friends and the first person I ever met when I came here to Louisville. Sure he suffered from strange Nsync hair at times, but a better guy you'll never meet.
He was driving in his car, on the way home from a night at the bar where he was more well loved and known than Norm at Cheers. He was on the road I drive every day, to and from work. It's twisty and turny and he didn't have on his seat belt.

That's it, he just wasn't wearing his seat belt. Chances are good he'd be alive right now, up at Good Times singing Save a Horse Ride a Cowboy, or Whiskey Lullaby or some equally good song, if he had only been wearing his seat belt.

Of all of Jason's friends, Clay was the first one who ever made me feel welcome. Now that he's gone, I feel like I was cheated out of the chance to really get to know him. He was young, in his 20s, and engaged to the sweetest girl, Nikki. God how I can't even begin to imagine how she must have felt.

The funeral was unreal. It went on for like eight hours and I've never seen so many people. I think Nikki said something like 800 people showed up. Let's just say Clay never met a stranger and he was always making friends. Hell, he had seven grooomsmen scheduled to be in his wedding, and I'm pretty damn certain he'd asked every one of them, including J, to be his best man. If there's a person in Louisville who didn't know him, I'd be suprised.


After the funeral a bunch of Jason's gang got together at my house and we had a big party where we proceeded to get tanked. I drank what, maybe three bottles of red wine thanks to Jason's pal Josh who works at the liquor store. This saturday we're all getting together again in Clay's honor.

In the short time I knew him, Clay touched my life more than some of the people who I've known my whole life. The lesson I learned is simple. Sing out loud and enjoy life, no matter what anyone else thinks. If you love yourself, and love life, everything else is gravy.
Clay certainly loved life. You could tell. And when we were at the wake, and got to say goodbye, there's never been a clearer message from beyond that there is more out there than just this life. He was happy, he was loved, and he loved others. But in that funeral home, he was just gone. I've seen dead bodies in funeral homes before, but never experienced anything quite like what I did seeing Clay's that day. In J's words, "he just wasn't there anymore. Whatever made Clay, Clay, was just gone." And you can't tell me that whatever that was, that magnificent something, that it's just simply slipped out into the void and will be no more.

I don't believe that, because I know better. I'm not sure I believe in the concrete idea of the pearly gates, or hell either for that matter, but I know there's more than what we see. Someone out there is responsible for the fabulousness of this world, and all the people in it. It didn't just happen by some freak explosion.

Somewhere out there, Clay is still singing. I plan to sing along, to my own tunes, from here, for quite a long time. A very very long time, because I love my own life and just about everything in it. But on the day I sing my last, there will be more than just long lost family waiting for me.

Rest In Peace seems highly inaccurate. Rest in Joy, in song, in laughter and in love.
And in all that, we'll remember Stephen Clay Crockett, one of my most favorite people of all time.