Greg Hungerford, Part One

My best friend passed away last night. He'd been admitted to the hospital on Sunday after fainting with his pulse and blood pressure at frighteningly low levels. He'd been having a wide variety of health problems for a while, and before this incident there had been discussion that he might require a pacemaker. He finally had the surgury yesterday, and seemed to emerge from it in good shape. Then, apparently there was a blood clot, and he passed away with no warning, still in the hospital.

I had visited him on Monday, and he'd been in good spirits, looking forward to resuming normal life once the pacemaker was in. I honestly thought I'd be seeing him again any day, and was looking forward to a new, healthy Greg who could join me on walks up at Hanging Rock, only a few miles from his home.

I called a lot of people today to share the news; Greg never had any trouble making friends, and he's going to be remembered by a lot of people. I promised to post information about the funeral here, but, alas, I don't have anything firm yet. Tentatively, there will be a memorial service for Greg Tuesday at 3pm. Hopefully I'll have definite information soon.

I've started work on a memorial post about Greg. This post has been about his death; what I want to do is tell you about his life, but it's more than I can process at the moment. Greg has been an ever-present part of my life for twenty five years. He was my intellectual sparring partner, my voice of wisdom, my ally in tough times, and the one person who I was always free to laugh loudly and freely with. It's going to take a little while to sort out an organize my thoughts.