I have a pet peeve. Okay I have lots of pet peeves - but I think at the top of the list is use of the term "1st Annual". I want to make it perfectly clear - while you might HOPE to make something an annual event you cannot have a 1st annual. Websters defines Annual as "occuring or happening every year or once a year". So, for something to be annual event - it must have occured every year or once a year.
The word you are looking for my friends is INAUGURAL. I will rely on our friends at Websters to tell us that inaugural means "marking a beginning:first in a projected series".
So mark it on your calendar - December 29 is the Inaugural ban the use of 1st annual day if you can't acknowledge it on December 29 perhaps a substitute date for this annual event should be February 30 - okay now my rant is just getting silly

Choked on your own vomit - not the nicest way to go. News delivered by a drunken friend - not the nicest messenger, yet my friend this was much of your life and your death wasn't it? Substance use and abuse, unsavory people and unsavory situations combined with glimpses of sanity and the you that you were designed to be appearing in pockets.
I know that this is not how you wanted it. I know you longed for more and that you loved God and desperately wanted to always be found in His will. Yet in spite of this desire the demons always found there way back in and once back in it did not take long before they were in control. I knew you as an affirming, loving, fun, intelligent man who cared about himself and his fellow man. But the demons, oh those demons they knew that if they could have your attention - even for a minute that they could make that man disappear and be replaced with desperation and despair, fear and shame, and a willingness to  say anything and do anything, to your fellow man in order to feed those demons.
I've gotta admit that I am mad. Mad at you for not reaching out just one more time, mad at me - wondering if I missed something or could have done more and mad at those around you who cared more about their next high then in doing something to step in and say "you gotta stop" when they saw how out of control things had become in your life.
So as I stare at the computer wondering how to say goodbye I whisper a prayer for your parents that God's peace would surround and comfort them. I try to focus on the times that I knew the clean you and the memories of the man I knew instead of focusing on how you died and I hold onto the hope that one day I will see you in heaven.
The fight is over my friend, rest well.

Not that I am counting - but it is 108 days until spring. Enough said?