For A Friend...

Folks, I'm breaking my over-a-year-long streak of not posting because I have some sad news. Someone that I consider a good friend, Chance over at SayUncle, suddenly and unexpectedly lost his wife to an unexplained cardiac event earlier this week.

Words cannot express how shocked we all were to hear this news. I've known Chance for well over a decade, meeting him in person in 2010 at the NRA Annual Meeting in Charlotte, NC, but having been online friends for years before that. Chance was one of the first "big" gunbloggers to link me, both when I was blogging at the site formerly known as North Georgia Dogma, then Toys in the Attic, and then here. He survived the three-hour-long, 7-mile ride from the hotel to the convention center in Pittsburgh in the Tactical Minivan.

Heck, Unc helped me get hooked up with Shooting Illustrated.

I honestly can't even begin to wrap my head around what he must be going through right now, I can't. Sudden, unexpected and life-changing; this would shatter pretty much anyone. I would take it as a kindness if you could go and drop Unc a word or two of encouragement, a joke, anything to help him in this darkest hour.

And Chance, if you see this: You've called me before; you have the number. If you ever want to talk, vent, or just have another human being on the other end of the phone, give me a call. I don't know what you're going through right now, but I'll do anything I can if it will help you right now.

I have to go, now, before I cry all over my laptop.

That is all.