rip stan simons

stan in santa cruz in about 77, originally uploaded by judywatt.

We found out yesterday that an old friend of ours had an apparent heart attack in his sleep the other night and was found by his wife in the morning, dead. He was maybe a year older than I am, so I am thinking 58ish.

We hadn't seen him in many years, so he was really more of an ancient acquaintance at this point, but he was one of a large group of friends we knew and lived with in the 70s off and on.

He'd been living up in Sacramento for the last 20 years or so and I think the last time we saw him was at least 18 years ago. He was closer friends with our old friend Joan who lives up there, but when she and her husband got divorced in about 1991 or 92, Stan took her husband's side and Joan pretty much never spoke to him again after that as far as I know, and we never saw him after that either.

It's still a shock though when someone in his 50s drops dead without any warning that something's wrong. And I hope his wife Fran is OK - we had heard she was ill recently and now this.

Other than this sad news, it's also been kind of stressful for other reasons lately but I won't babble on about all that right now. I've been posting more on FB lately than here - it's easier right now in some ways. Different places are good for different things and all that.

Gotta get outside now - need some fresh air and sunshine and we have an abundance of that here today!