Saying good bye to EZ

Having been a patron at Old Europe for a while now, I have met a lot of fun people sitting at the bar in front of my computer. One day, I met two lovely women, a mother and daughter named Bev and Lisa. for those of you that follow my flickr site, you may remember the photo I shot of them.


Well, the other half of the story was Bev's Husband. People called him Easy. Easy was such a nice man. He was a Biker at heart. A kind soul and a great listener. He would sit at the bar and talk with whoever was there, and not in an intrusive way.... he was just ... well, Easy.

Over the last couple of weeks, I saw Bev and Easy at the restaurant a few times, and Bev always greeted me warmly, and Easy would just give me a firm handshake and look me deep in the eyes and I knew that things were ok in the world.

Those two were so in love, Easy would always say that Bev was his angel, and they would laugh together in such a way that you could tell they were life partners at it's finest example.

We found out on Tuesday that after some minor surgery, Easy had some complications and passed away.
It was really shocking. We all had just seen Easy the week before and you never expected to lose him.

Yesterday was Easy's funeral service, and this morning his friends and family hopped on their Harley's and took a ride.
This afternoon there was a going away party for Easy at the Folsom Hotel, Bar and Saloon.
This was not a yuppie crowd, it was almost a scene out of a movie. The guests had leather chaps, jackets, and black boots. The sound of their V-twin engines announced their arrivals.

There was a wall of photos of Easy including a picture of him standing next to a statue of Jack Daniels, that after drinking pretty heavily one night at some bar, Easy walked out with the statue over his shoulder and ran down Sutter St with the statue and wouldn't return it until the next day. Seeing this man in these photos made you smile and brought a tear to your eye.

There were about 50 people that showed up at the Hotel, and after a while, they showed a video that someone had created with more photos of Easy and all his friends. It was great to see these photos put to music. As the video played, there was not a dry eye in the house. It was heart breaking to see Bev and Lisa sitting in the front laughing and cheering when they saw photos of Easy making funny faces, or posing next to good old Jack Daniels, and then weeping un-ashamedly during the rest of the video.

I went outside and took a photo of Easy's Harley which was parked outside the hotel, and this will be the photo of the day.
I will miss Easy, and I am glad that I had just a few moments in my life to be touched by this man and his kind spirit.