Published August 16, 2018

Danny had been on my mind lately. The reasons, like life, were a series of seemingly random events and circumstances that somehow worked together to point in a certain direction. Then, on Monday morning, I got the call telling me that he was gone.

Oof, as Danny often said. Oof, as if reacting to a body blow, a gut punch. That’s how it felt.

I’m writing this during my private candlelight vigil for Remy Daniel Miller II, whose funeral Mass is six hours (and two time zones) away as I begin this remembrance of the friend I met during our freshman year of high school. What would he think, I wonder, if he knew that my apartment building prohibits candles, forcing me to improvise with a battery-powered version and a Shutterstock image? My guess is he’d allow it.

Why had Danny been on my mind lately? For starters, two other high school friends — both of them one year my senior — visited me five weeks ago, stirring up memories that began flooding back a few weeks earlier when they told me they’d booked their flight. Flipping through yearbooks put a lot of names and faces back on my radar. And around that time, I reconnected with a classmate, the one who called me with the bad news Monday.

There were other reasons Danny had been on my mind. We hadn’t traded text messages in quite some time, and I felt bad about that. I wrote elsewhere this week that he was a better friend to me than I was to him, and one damning piece of evidence was the fact of his being the one who always began a text exchange. One thing I could count on every December were those familiar two words from him: “Happy Festivus!”

More seriously, it weighed on me that I hadn’t told Danny about my transition, which I’m sure would have come as a surprise. Unable to find the courage and the way to bring it up, I’d set it aside but felt it gnawing at me amid my rekindling of friendships with others from high school. Did he end up finding out but never asking me about it? What would he have said if I had told him? I will never know.

Danny’s friendship during our freshman year at St. Louis Catholic High School in Lake Charles, La., helped me adjust to a different environment after attending the same school for my first eight years as a student. Four years later, he filled that role again when we had a class together as we started at McNeese State University. He was steady, he was funny, and he knew how to tell a good story and an even better joke, even if the joke was on him.

Especially if the joke was on him.

We loved to talk about and listen to rock music. If other people knew that Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody” included the lyrics “Bismillah! No, we will not let you go,” it eluded the two of us, who heard it as a nod to Danny’s surname: “It’s Mill-ah! No, we will not let you go.” As I screwed up the courage to play guitar in front of people at school, Danny made me feel like a rock star, showing an interest beyond my ability to live up to it.

What I remembered often about Danny over the years was his love of family and the unwavering respect he had for his father from the start of our friendship. He would talk about Remy, whose name he was given at birth, in reverential tone and language. Long before I became a sportswriter, and then after, Danny proudly described how his dad would read everything in the sports section, including the agate page. When teachers would instruct us to be able to cite our sources and back up our assertions on a given assignment, Danny translated that to longstanding advice from his father: “Get your facts straight.” And Danny would say it with a knowing nod of the head that punctuated the no-nonsense nature of Remy’s directive.

And oh, all the laughs. Owing to an impressive spectrum of cultural and social knowledge, Danny helped transform the practice of reading aloud in honors English class into running bits of improv that tested the patience of our teacher. Yep, inform us that a truckle was some sort of wheel, and we’d regularly call out, “Truckle, truckle, truckle — wheel say it every time.”

Or, if we encountered a Shakespeare character named Ross, or Ros. (as in Rosencrantz), we’d go full chorus and add a neighborhood friend of Danny’s (named Ross) to a routine that blended a deacon and the Crimson Tide of the University of Alabama football program into an aside borrowing heavily from Steely Dan and deftly working in a Bama pun of Shakespearean context by referring to a pallbearer (or was that Paul “Bear” Bryant, then still the coach at Alabama?). Too few in the world would ever know our brilliance.

Not every utterance was a keeper, you must understand, but even some of the throwaway lines deserved a wider audience than our small band of merry pranksters. (Throwaway line? “Careful, there’s a calculator in it.”)*

*A select few will get the reference.

♦

This is what I wrote Tuesday in the online guestbook linked to Danny’s obituary:

Danny was a better friend to me than I was to him, and that speaks to his selflessness and giving heart. He offered friendship and help at times when I needed them the most. That includes high school, freshman year of college and an extended period of unemployment nearly 30 years later. He bought me breakfast a few times at Jerry LeBlanc’s restaurant and made it possible to reconnect with Jerry, another classmate, helping to put some solid ground under me at a time of uncertainty and instability. He invited me to a holiday meal and gathering with his family after my mom died. Danny made caring and giving seem as natural as breathing, as a thing you just did, and that speaks to his wonderful upbringing. He loved his family very much, and it came through in how he spoke about each and every one. Whether we were talking about or listening to rock music or sports or just about life, Danny was an unforgettable part of my youth. To someone who never really felt like she fit in, in so many places, Danny was a friend I didn’t fully appreciate at the time for the way he treated everyone fairly and in ways in which their dignity was a given. That is not as common as it should be in this world. I will miss him, as I know so many will and already do.”

Classmates assembled at Jerry LeBlanc’s restaurant last night and shared stories of Danny, and later, pictures of the gathering for the benefit of those of us who couldn’t be there. A group chat on Facebook had become a place to mourn and remember, so the photos found a welcome home there. In a few hours, they and others will attend Danny’s funeral.

As I sat down to write this remembrance of my friend, I searched the music library in my laptop for songs with the word “funeral” in the title. There were three: “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” by Elton John, “Funeral In My Heart” by my nephew, Gill Landry, and “Gary’s Funeral” from the “Thirtysomething” TV show soundtrack. The latter made me think of the last time I wrote a blog post on the day of a funeral of a Lake Charles friend whose death we did not see coming. As with Gary Laney’s funeral, I can be at Danny’s only in spirit this morning.

The Elton John song rocks just enough that I can imagine myself trying to learn the guitar licks to impress Danny, who would be urging me to turn up the volume just a little bit more on the amp. Mostly, it goes on for more than five minutes before there are any lyrics, giving my mind space for the memories of Danny that choose to find me.

My nephew, who was born and raised in Lake Charles, had this to say about his song, “Funeral In My Heart,” in 2015: “It’s a small tip of the hat to the remnants of all the burned out sections of that psychotic and alluring asphalt cardiovascular system in America. Particularly that gorgeous dying capillary U.S. Route 65 and its tributaries from Clayton, LA to Lake Providence, and all the dreams that ever lived to die there.”

I first listened to his debut solo album on the drive from Lake Charles back to Baton Rouge after my mother’s funeral in the summer of 2006. Danny, who came to the funeral home to pay his respects to my mom, will be buried at the same cemetery where both of my parents were laid to rest. Johnson Funeral Home, which handled their arrangements, is handling Danny’s. The funeral home was founded by a gentleman who umpired baseball games Danny and I played in. The funeral will be in a church where I played guitar for funerals and weddings. The intersecting lines and concentric circles of our lives go well beyond all that, which I’m reminded of with each classmate’s contribution to the ongoing Facebook chat as morning breaks in Louisiana.

As I play my nephew’s song one more time before wrapping this up, I think about how much Danny would have enjoyed hearing the details of Gill’s music career, and how I may have played a small role in inspiring him to learn how to play guitar. But that’s another story I never got around to telling Danny, to my regret.

How do friends drift apart like we did? I ask myself that question a lot, especially as I reconnect with others from my past. I do think it’s a thing that happens, and that it doesn’t necessarily mean there isn’t caring anymore. Our lives take us on different paths, but with certain friendships, the connections endure despite the thousands of miles between the physical selves and the years between conversations. What I can tell you about Danny is that the way his death has brought so many people together, online and in person, to share memories and reunite in the process, it has been an emotional reminder to me of what a special group of people I came of age with and graduated with decades ago.

Our Class of ’79 mourned together even before our senior year began. We lost a classmate who died in a car crash during the summer, and even now I can’t hear “Dust in the Wind” by Kansas without thinking of Barney Cox. Some who went to his funeral will be at Danny’s today. There have been others over the years.

My makeshift candlelight vigil has turned into an all-nighter, which now puts me in mind of cramming the night before a test in high school. That brings me back to thoughts of Danny. I will miss his Festivus texts. I will miss his asking about the weather in the Pacific Northwest. I already miss his asking me the next question about Nick Saban or Les Miles before I was finished answering the previous question. I will miss the kindness of a friend who was happy to buy a meal for an old classmate who didn’t know when there would be another paycheck.

I don’t know what songs will be part of Danny’s funeral Mass today, but I keep thinking about “On Eagle’s Wings,” the one I played at my dad’s funeral the year after we graduated from high school. Danny was there for that funeral, too.

I note for you that Danny’s obituary says: As a member of Our Lady Queen of Heaven Catholic Church he was an Extraordinary Minister of Holy Communion and an attendant of daily Mass. He was on the board of directors and retreat captain for Our Lady of the Oaks Retreat House in Grand Coteau. I have no doubt the song held meaning for him, whether it is sung today or not. Either way, it feels appropriate to listen to it and think of him and his family.

The funeral Mass is now three hours away. I imagine the church will be filled to or near capacity with people. They grieve because he’s left us, and too soon. His passing put a funeral in their hearts and mine, and they will be there because they know what a special person Danny Miller was, maybe one of the finest gentlemen they will ever meet. In saying that, I feel more confident than after any other all-nighter that I indeed have my facts straight.

Photo by Smileus via Shutterstock