A blog about travel, photography, and all the life in between
A blog about travel, photography, and all the life in between
Home is Where You Hang Your Hat
Remembering a close friend lost too soon.
One of my closest friends died suddenly and unexpectedly on August 3rd from a heart attack of unknown origin. It is presumed to be a complication from long COVID, but we’ll never know for sure. He was only 32. This photo project is my way of honoring his memory. I took his hat around his hometown of Prescott to several of his favorite spots, and I’ll be sharing those photos along with memories and stories.
Chand was the biggest bookworm I’ve ever met. Everywhere he went he had a book with him, and he could chew through a massive 800 page novel in a matter of days. He didn’t have a smart phone, he just read books. And all sorts of books too. Mostly science fiction and fantasy, but he also loved to read about science—he would pick up a used chemistry textbook and read through it cover to cover, even though he didn’t understand the math. Because of his love of the written word, he also had a huge vocabulary. He would often slip big, obscure words into regular conversation (and then tease me for not knowing what they meant). For my birthday this year he got me a book about Freddie Mercury, taking advantage of my newfound interest in Queen to try to get me to read a book, for once.
Chand was a beautiful piano player and singer. He had a deep baritone voice that was just meant to be heard over the airwaves, and he actually did work in radio for a bit. We were going to start a podcast.
While we had met once or twice prior, we really became friends through a Facebook post I wrote asking if anyone knew a piano player. My university’s theater company was putting on a small production of the musical Jekyll and Hyde (awesome musical, by the way), and I was playing sax in the pit orchestra. We had gone through a couple piano players but were having trouble finding one with both the skill to play the pieces and the commitment to keep coming to rehearsal—especially as midterms and finals were ramping up. Chand saw my post and came to play for us (even though he wasn’t actually a student at the school), and through many hours of rehearsals and shows we became fast friends.
When Chand came down to visit me in Tucson in February and I showed him how I was learning to play Bohemian Rhapsody on the guitar, he told me that I really needed to get a piano so that we could play together. (I actually did end up getting one, and I’m learning to play. He would have been so excited.) He told me to bring my guitar or sax next time I come up to Prescott so that we could jam… we never did get to do that.
Chand was a big coffee (AKA “go juice”) fan. And not any of the fancy stuff either, he was happy with a plain old cup of strong, black coffee. I remember every time he’d come down to visit us in Tucson, there was always a pot of coffee ready to go when I woke up (he was a morning person, me not so much…) He loved local coffee shops, and while I never actually visited Wild Iris with him, I remember him talking about it being a favorite spot.
I have a lot of fond memories hanging out with Chand at a local coffee shop back in Daytona Beach. I’d study, he’d read, I’d yell at my code when it wasn’t working, he’d offer less than helpful advice (such as, “have you tried making it work?”).
I also have a lot of fond memories about less wise uses of coffee. There was one time that Chand and I were hanging out later in the evening, after our respective significant others had already gone to bed. We were chatting and having some drinks, and we were starting to get tired and decided that we didn’t want to be, so we brewed a pot of coffee. This was maybe 12 or 1 in the morning, but we figured, hey, if we put rum in the coffee it’ll offset the caffeine just enough to keep us awake a bit longer but not wired. Needless to say, that did not go as planned, and we watched the sunrise from the living room of my apartment.
Chand and I had a kind of tradition where we’d smoke cigars when we got together. It all started years ago back in Florida—school was out for the summer and most students had already left town. He and I were looking for something to do, and he asked me if I liked cigars. I said “yeah, I’ve smoked them once or twice,” and he suggested a cigar bar downtown. So we headed down there, only to find that they (along with most of the other bars) were closed, considering it was like a Wednesday night in the summer in a college town. There was a Hookah bar down the street though that was open, and having never done hookah I thought it was worth a try. We hung out for a few hours smoking hookah and chatting, and I think that that was the first night we really started to get close. We talked a lot about our pasts—I remember that that’s the first time he told me he had a son back in Prescott. We also talked that night about how great it was that we could share such a deep, totally platonic opposite-sex friendship without any kind of attraction or awkwardness to make things weird. I think the bond we had was really something pretty rare, and definitely special.
Fast forward to 2019 when Chand moved back out to Arizona—we finally got to have our cigars. I remember sitting on the front porch of his house late at night in November in Prescott. It was cold! We hadn’t seen each other in a couple years.
When I went to Chile later for Christmas that year we picked up some Cuban cigars to bring back with us (which is totally legal, for anyone raising their eyebrows at that), and got to smoke them with Chand when he came down to Tucson to visit for the first time in January of 2020.
The last time I smoked a cigar with Chand was last August when we went up to Prescott for the day to see him. He took us to the Park Plaza liquor store to show me their massive humidor, and we picked up a couple of Cohibas to smoke while I shot the Milky Way out in Prescott National Forest. It was a great night.
Disclaimer: Smoking is bad.
When we went up to Prescott last August to visit Chand, he brought us out to this trail for a leisurely hike in the forest (since most places we would normally hang out were shut down by COVID). We got maybe half a mile in, and between the heat and the altitude it was really kicking my butt. So we ended up mostly sitting on a log chatting for a while and then headed back.
Those that know me personally know that I’ve been working on losing weight and getting in shape. I’ve lost over 130 lbs since that “hike”. Chand told me all the time how proud of me he was at how hard I’ve been working. When Steven and I went up to Prescott for his memorial service in August, we went out to the trail and brought his hat along so that, in a way, we could finally do the hike with him.
One of my favorite memories of Chand from back in Florida is one night when my ex and I were out and about and decided to grab dinner at Red Robin. We called Chand and his fiancée and asked if they wanted to join us, spur of the moment. They agreed, so we got a table and waited for them to come meet us. 10, 20, 30 minutes go by… the waitress was definitely starting to get skeptical that anybody was actually going to show up—you know how millennials are. We were honestly expecting the “sorry, we’re not going to make it” text. Then I get a call from Chand that they had gotten a flat tire. “Oh no!” I told him, “well, no biggie, we’ll get together next time!” “No no,” he said, “we’re still coming! Just wanted to let you know why we’re running late.” I think that really speaks to the kind of friend that he was. He was the guy I could text at 10:30 on a Friday night and say, “I’m bored, wanna go to Applebee’s?” and he’d be there.
There are plenty more memories I could share about Chand. Game nights at my apartment in Daytona Beach (Munchkin was the staple), dinners at our favorite Thai place, studying at Sweet Marlay’s Coffee, and long nights spent chatting just the two of us. There was the time one of my first college parties ended up turning into a drunken walk to IHOP at two in the morning. I remember that Chand would always ask the server their name and introduce himself; nobody was a stranger to him.
The last time I saw him was a few weeks ago when he came down to Tucson to visit. We had Mexican food, played Settlers of Catan, and watched him agonize over which books to buy at Bookman’s when he only had so much space in his backpack. And, after several visits of Laika learning that she could startle the bejeezus out of him, he finally befriended her and earned her trust—she even let him pet her on the head.
Chand was one of the funniest, kindest, most genuine people I know. Even though he had been dealt his fair share of adversity in life, he always had a positive attitude and lit up any room he walked into. He was never afraid to be himself or share his quirky sense of humor. He was a loyal, caring friend who would probably take a bullet for the people close to him. When Steven and I started dating, he called and asked to talk to him. I believe the message was, “break her heart and I’ll break your legs.” He made some mistakes in life and faced some struggles, as we all do, but he was, without a doubt a good person.
It still doesn’t seem real that he’s gone. I can’t shake the urge to call him up and let him know this big news I just heard. I regret not going up to visit more often, and that we didn’t take more photos together. We never had a chance to take him to the Desert Museum. Don’t take moments with your loved ones for granted.
