In Memory Of A Friend.

How many of you can remember what you were doing exactly 24 years ago today? For some of you, you were not even born yet. But I remember that day like it was yesterday. Shortly after midnight on the morning of January 21, 1989 I was on the phone. I was calling my work to see if my friend who had worked my shift as closing manager was going to bring me the store keys or if I needed to go get them. I surprised when the franchise owner of the store answered the phone instead.0 He informed me to get to the store quickly. Upon arrival I was met with the owner, a news reporter and a team of police investigators. The owner took me aside and explained that Shane had been shot in a robbery. Shane was in the hospital and the owner had set us up with rooms at a motel near it. Two days later Shane's heart gave out and this world lost one of the best people I had ever had the privilege of knowing. Shane was 24 at the time of his murder and today marks the 24th anniversary of his death. I can't but help think how much I have got to see and do that he never had the chance to. Shane was more then a co-worker, he was a great friend. He was the first openly gay man I had met and I looked up to him for answers to my own confusion. I never did get to tell him I was gay too. One of the first expressions he ever taught me I still repeat to this day. "Its not the length, but the girth and what you do with it. You can f*** a pencil and yet feel nothing." I will forever remember the times and laughs we shared at work, at his home, and even at Denny's at 2 am after we closed the stores down. But inside there is more then sadness, but anger too. Shane should not have been taken from us that soon. I should have been working that night. I spent the next nearly twenty years blaming myself and punishing myself in ways you could not imagine. I don't anymore. I know now that its was not my fault. But during those years, I lived with terrible guilt. Meanwhile the thug that pulled the trigger sits to this day awaiting the death penalty. A month before this robbery, this ass robbed another restaurant shooting an innocent customer who was in it at the time. A few months later he was involved in a shotgun attack in which three others were shot. Luckily in all but Shane's the victims survived. He was caught and sentenced in 1991 and yet, with California's great appeal system and overly covering their own asses, he remains able to fight for his life when he so callously disregarded the lives of others.  Why is he still alive? The death penalty is a joke. He should have fried years ago. I only hope Shane is in peace. You are greatly missed my friend. Miss you terribly.

RIP

Herman Shane Weeks

7/23/1964 - 01/23/1989