Steven

A guy I know died this week, Steven. He was about my age. (I guess that is middle-aged, not that I feel it) I didn’t know him very well, he was really just a guy from the dog park. We used to talk as our dogs played. We had quite intense conversations, he was quite the chatter. We’d always chat away in the middle of the dog park as our woofs played with the other dogs.

Steven had degrees, and always had something interesting to say, but he never seemed to work. He said something about work when I asked him, but it seemed as though he had been retrenched, and he didn’t offer any further details, so I didn’t ask.

I went through his first dog, Gaz, dying, and his subsequent new puppy, Gabe. Both Labs, Steven was a lab man.

I went through his feud with Stella, which I never quite understood what the fuck that was about, to be honest. I know Stella is a space cadet, at the best of times, which is what I always put the feud down to. There was something they weren’t saying, I think maybe sex may have been involved, or at least, unrequited desire, more so than the actual dead. Oh yes, the steamy shenanigans of the local off-lead. It made the dog park quite uncomfortable, the two of them being there together, or at least, unable to be there together, until Sophie stop coming, which seemed to fixed that.

I went through his parents moving from a house in my street to one of the apartments in the new complex built at the end of my street. Steven was very pleased for them.

I used to see Steven driving around in his silver car and he’d always wave.

We’d chatted for years down the dog park. It was always a bit political, our chats. I was only chatting to him the other day, something about the Federal Government. I’d called Morrison Scumo. Steven had talked about the cover ups by the Liberal Party.

And now Steven is dead. He died suddenly from a pre-existing medical condition, so one of the other women down the dog park explained. I didn’t ask what the pre-existing medical condition was. Although, I wanted to. I mean, don’t you always want to know those details, but I was a little lost in thought about him actually dying and the moment passed.

Funny, he keeps coming into my mind. Fancy Steven dying, I keep thinking to myself, just out of the blue. I was only chatting to him a day and now he is dead. That’s how fragile life is. When we were chatting a week ago, under the blue sky looking out at the green lawn, as we always chatted, he had a week to live.