All the best Mate.

Last Friday was the 9^th anniversary of the death of a mate of mine.

While I was bitching about what a shit week I’d had at work, I should have been reflecting on how lucky I really am.

Nathan and I went to school together for just one year in 1992 - our final year at school - and then rarely saw each other until early in 1999.

Although we didn’t hang out together that much at school, I knew he was a fantastic guy who was loved by everyone and there’s no one that would have ever said a bad word about him. He was a talented actor, musician and general nice guy.

Around the end of 1998 / start of 1999, he happened to move in with one of my best mates and one weekend we all ended up at a bbq together. It had been a long time since I’d seen him and it was great to catch up.

By sheer coincidence, I was at Byron Bay the next weekend and ran into him again. None of my mates or his wanted to go for a surf, so he and I did. We had a great surf together and enjoyed each others company a lot. It was bizarre – I had barely seen Nath in the past 7 years, and now I had seen him two weekends in a row.

A few days later he died.

He was tragically killed in a car crash coming back from Byron to the Gold Coast.

Alcohol was not a factor and it seems he fell asleep at the wheel on a notorious stretch of highway that has thankfully since been rerouted – too late for Nath, but not too late for others.

I drive to Byron quite a fair bit, and every time I pass near where he was killed, I always think back to those couple of weekends we shared together.

On top of all the usual reasons, I particularly found his passing extremely sad because it had only been a few days between when we were surfing and laughing together, to when I was sitting in the church looking at his coffin.

It was hard to comprehend.

It’s still hard to comprehend.

All the best mate.