Sonny

"When your time comes to die, be not like those whose hearts are filled with fear of death, so that when their time comes they weep and pray for a little more time to live their lives over again in a different way. Sing your death song, and die like a hero going home."

-Tecumseh

I knew things were serious because Sonny was as funny as ever.

We were all sitting around his dining room table, his wife of 57 years, my law partner who handles estate planning work, her legal assistant there to notarize whatever was being signed. And Sonny, there at the head of the table, a diminutive pater familias, too skinny now for his neatly tailored golf wear, a hard cervical collar balancing his head like an olive atop a spine being eaten away by cancer. Rusty the now-blind Yorkie, a part of every scene with this couple since I first watched them walking the waterfront lot behind our house years ago, shuffled stiffly down the hall. The family's longtime housekeeper, now a live-in care giver for both of her ill clients, watched TV in another room, the View maybe.

And Sonny had specific guidance regarding the disposition of his estate.

"I want you to go to the bank and get all my money, in twenties and hundreds, and stuff as much of it into my coffin as you can until you can just barely get the lid closed. I'm taking it all with me."

That was Sonny, always irreverent and frequently profane in a way that carried a punch today's steady stream of F-bombs on television seems to lack.

One day not so long ago we were dining outside on the bay at Harrison's, sipping Bloody Marys after the near-death experience of riding shotgun in his new Tesla as he demonstrated the dramatic acceleration associated with a button on the dash accurately labeled as "Insane". Beach Drive will never be the same.

This particular afternoon I was nursing the wounds of a bitter loss in a weeklong jury trial, wallowing in a little self-pity and observing that I didn't seem to get juries anymore.

Sonny, as it turned out, knew all the players, including a key figure on the other side who was involved in creating the bank we sued. It seems that years ago, as this person was trying to raise money among the wealthy families in Bay County, he'd approached Sonny as a potential investor. Everyone knew Sonny grew up poor and fatherless, married young, and made his fortune when he invested in a gentleman's club, making him quite wealthy by panhandle standards outside of 30A. The perfect mark for someone looking for venture capital.

Sonny's response, however, which he reenacted at an uncomfortable decibel level for the staid crowd out having lunch, suggested his disdain for the new enterprise.

"If you want me to invest in your bank," Sonny said, pointing at his lap, "you can come over here and suck my d*ck!"

Have you ever cringed and laughed at the same time? I peered over my shoulder at the diners around us. None seemed to notice. This is Bay County, after all.

That Sonny entered our life at all after the storm was a moment of serendipity. We'd known each other for years, been neighbors as the kids were growing up, made small talk at the gym before the hurricane destroyed it and everything else that day.

Then P and I were refugees, living in a short-term rental over in south Walton. This particular afternoon Peg corralled me after work to see the house we ultimately bought in Dune Allen, a lovely little place a block off the beach. To celebrate this find, and get a feel for what we hoped would soon be our neighborhood, we stopped by the restaurant of the Santa Rosa Golf & Beach Club, the Vue, for a glass of wine.

Somewhere around the second glass, I happened to glance over my shoulder and spy a familiar bantam rooster gait, spry with shoulders thrown back and a strut that suggested he owned the place.

"Sonny! Is that you?"

He turned and smiled. "Mike! What in the hell are you doing here?"

Turns out they were also refugees, and had recently bought a place a few blocks away. Soon we were neighbors, riding our golf carts to each others' houses for cocktails and telling stories out on the porch, enjoying the breeze off the Gulf. Sonny had that raspy Southern voice that suggested a few too many cigarettes before his first bout with throat cancer, delivering wisdom about how to bargain with a car salesman, what could be wrong with my golf swing (turns out he taught golf himself in his youth, and actually knew Edwin Watts), and the trials and tribulations of running an adult business that dealt largely in cash as an absentee owner (hint: he built a trusted leadership team by making them part-owners, and made them call him every day with a cash receipts report. Trust but verify).

I once told P that Sonny was like a nicer version of my dad, one of those old Southern archetypes who lived larger than life, drank and smoked and laughed and pained over the travails of his beloved Gators. He'd made his fortune in something a lot of folks found disreputable, and it taught him not to give a damn what they thought. He was having a good time, right until the end.

And now he's gone. As we used to say in one of my favorite fighter pilot toasts, "Here's to us and those like us. When we're gone, the world will be a grayer place."

It's a grayer place indeed this morning. I hate the thought that we'll never have another chance to share a drink and a smile. There's no replacing that, which tells you something about Sonny. He was one of a kind.

Weird yellow light outside, a reminder that western New York is blanketed in smoke from fires raging up in Canada.

The picture doesn't really capture the sepia glow here in the office. It certainly can't convey the damp chill as the sun's rays are blotted out. Fifty-three degrees in June. Just doesn't feel natural.

Time to clean myself up for this mediation in a bit. Life goes on.