By Sara Mawyer
ContributorNovember did not slip by me unnoticed this year as is has countless times before. Someone had left my sphere and slipped the bounds of earth on a chilly November day in 2004, and I've spent more than a few days pondering the meaning of life because of it. John Tucker - my friend. Now, more than a year later, I wish he could parachute down from heaven and tell us what he knows now that he didn’t know before. He had a blue million stories to tell while he lived among us. I bet he's got at least twice that many now!

Always highly intuitive, I’m not so sure John hasn’t touched my shoulder once or twice, or maybe blown in my ear to get my attention. He was the diamond in the rough, a one of a kind. He was the good, the bad and the ugly, but he was one loyal friend. The memories are like crystal, unblemished by the giant clock that ticks away each moment of our own lives.

I can still see him standing in the doorway to the composing room at Focus, his long skinny legs sticking out from his red polyester shorts. He was wearing a huge burgundy sombrero with a smokin' cigar in one hand while quoting a famous line from one of his favorite movies, "Badges!? We don't need no stinkin' badges!" Ah.... he's looking down on us now with that famous smirk lurking underneath his handle bar mustache. Now that he has joined a higher light, he must know how much that line stuck. The staff was perpetually quoting that line behind his back (only we couldn't say it with nearly as much bravado!).

To everything there is a season. The ebb and flow of life continues on. And we, whom Father Tuck has left behind, are each getting older. For me, he graced me with his wisdom, we enjoined in seeing the ironies in life, we laughed at the utterly ridiculous folks who took themselves so very seriously. If ever I knew a person who could take chicken poopie and make chicken salad out of it, it was Tucker.
His death, of course, reminds me of my own mortality. I hit 50 this year (actually it felt more like hitting a wall at 50 mph. than just another birthday). I'm a bonafide card-totin' AARP member. And as I sit here writing this now, I know John's hovering over me getting a chuckle out of it.

And, well . . . just because he up and left us here on this unstable earth doesn't mean we might not hitch up again somewhere further on down the line to tell a joke, and have a good laugh. And, the people left behind on the planet below might hear these whispy faint words as they blow on the wind through the hills and valleys, "Badges!? We don't need no stinkin' badges!"

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