Good-bye to another sobriety friend

This is five seven sobriety friends or acquaintances I've had die in the last half-dozen years, now, with the passing of Dale Phelps.

And, no, AAer types, this isn't about the disease doing push-ups outside your door. That's a metaphor I reject, and besides ...

This is about sober friends and acquaintances who died that way.

Interestingly, I met none in real life.

Chani was more acquaintance than friend. Still never did hear definitely what killed her. She was about my age. Had some mental health issues, but seemed to be getting beyond them. But she passed in the middle of 2010.

Then came Kishi. I was likely her second-closest friend in Lifering. Though we never met in person, we talked a lot on the phone. A recurrence of her feminine cancer, combined with low reserves from a lifetime battling Crohn's, did it. She was my age, and died in the fall of 2012.

Ray? Ray Smith? Wow. A shining light in secular sobriety of many groups, as well as secular humanism in general. He died, also from cancer, just a little over a year after Kishi, early in 2014.

Then Manya, who surely was Kishi's closet Lifering friend, about a year after that.

And now, Dale.

And, I'd forgotten about two others.

Scott Larsen, with his diabetes catching up to him.

And, Mog — Michael O'Grady — to whom I was more intellectually attuned than any of the others.