I write this several days after the unfolding a personal tragedy in my life, and even more days since receiving my gift. I will tell this tale in chronological order, or so. It would mean a lot to me if you would read through it, as it ties in closely with my gift in a way.

Like many others in this exchange, it was my first. I have a very short reddit history and I managed to put about 250+ words in my "likes" section for redditgifts. Most of it mentioned how sort of hipster-douche bag I am, and also mention that I love and play music. Since music is sort of hard to ask for without asking for a particular thing, which I did not want to do, I advised him to pick from anything else on my list since it may be easier. Some days later...

I waited in severe anticipation of my gift for the few days after getting the "SHIPPED" confirmation and a few cute and fun messages from my secret santa. I had told him that I wouldn't be in town the day that it was meant to arrive, but eventually I did come home to a wonderful package on my porch. With some help from my girlfriend, this is how that went:

[go look at the pictures on the right now :D ]

With what I can only imagine as a hyperbolic "challenge accepted" face, my santa gifted me this very music-related gift. Seen above is a 10" ZHT splash cymbal (with appropriate cymbal mounting hardware) and a favorite CD of his. His intentions were expressed in a lovely little note that was a definite icing on the cake. I was ABSOLUTELY ecstatic that day.

One of the things that my secret santa stalked about me to help realize something I'd like was that I am in a band. My band is my family; we are four best friends that absolutely thrive off of each other's energy in many settings beyond just music. All of us befriended one another long before the band became a serious focus for us. They are Jordan, Jeremy, and Chris, and I have a bond with them that is stronger than blood. Every note of our music is carried in tandem, with equal weight across all of our shoulders, and that weight is heavy but appreciated. We love what we do together.

Well, with everyone in my band but me still in school, they were all busy juggling school along with work, and finals were all coming up. With winter comes less shows, so we had gotten a little lax on our practice schedule, and we had been able to spend even less time together beyond that. We let a week slip by without practice, but we decided that we would get together on Saturday the 17th (of December).

Practice was good. We just put out an album at the end of summer, and it was our debut release. I recorded all of it myself, in my bedroom/practice area. Anyhow, with finally having that set of songs on a tangible medium, we had been working on new songs. These songs renewed a vigor in us that had been thwarted by the stress of putting out our album months ago. It was exactly what we needed both as a band and individuals. It pushed us forward with our lives, because these new songs had even more emotive power than our past ones, and the future seemed promising. I had mentioned offhand that I got a baddass SS gift and I finally got to try it out for real and show it off to my friends. I didn't really use it very well, but it was fun and Jeremy said something along the lines of "that's legit as fuck".

A couple hours of practice felt like it needed a reward, especially after not being together with the 4 of us in awhile. Chris, our guitarist, wanted to go but opted to go to a house show with our collective friend, Kyle, instead. No hard feelings about it, the other three of us (plus my girlfriend, Halee) take off to ingest some half off appetizers at the local Applebees.

Dinner is great. This is a treat we usually give ourselves... pretty much whenever the fuck we can get a group together to go. We all chit chat about school and finals and how practice was actually quite productive. Everything feels great. It's exactly where we all want to be. Everyone comfortably being able to do what they want, and all of us knowing that the future is looking good. I fucking love my friends.

It's about 11pm, and my bandmates need to get going. Jordan has to work in the morning, Jeremy is an RA at his college so he has to be around to do his shit. I head home with Halee and look forward to some alone time, especially since it won't earsplitting loud. 12am hits. Phone is ringing, it's Jordan. He asks me to come to their school, where he was dropping off Jeremy. He says an ambulance just came and took him away after he had a seizure in the parking lot. He doesn't know what to do.

We head there immediately. Jordan is a mess, waiting for campus security to find him to ask him what happened. The big concern that we have is how soon we'll be able to go find Jeremy at the hospital since we were the only ones that knew what happened so far. We stand and talk for a little while, and then campus security picks him up to go talk somewhere else.

An hour goes by. He texts me a few times and says he's in an interrogation room, and has no clue what's going on. I thought that was pretty fucking weird. The texts stop, another hour goes by. I take Halee home while I'm waiting for Jordan to get free, and then I am back on campus waiting around.

Then I got the phone call. I ask who it is, and she responds that she is Jeremy's girlfriend's mom. He's dead. He's fucking dead. Just like that. Out of nowhere, no history of neurological problems, no prevailing health problems, just 22 years old and fucking dead. But all I can think about is Jordan, cut off from the world, talking to some pseudo-cop. I'm pinned between the blunt unexpected and the unknown and I don't know how to process anything. I can't even let myself become affected because Jordan was best friends with Jeremy for several years before this whole band nonsense started.

Eventually I start getting texts from Jordan again. He already knows, since the reason they had been talking to him for so much of the night was because a real detective came in to figure out what caused Jeremy's death. We reunite at 4am, and every feeling in our bodies subsides so that a massive deluge of pain, sadness, and confusion could pour out of us. I will never forget that hug, there in the breezeway of the dorm buildings. Just us two in complete embrace, crying and crying with passersby unaware of the absolute devastation.

Today is about a week later, as it's still pretty much Friday for me, even if it's 5am. I went to his funeral today. There was something in the league of 200 people there, the vast majority of this being friends rather than family. Instead of a religious service, dozens of people came up to speak, whether it be a story or a lesson learned from him throughout his relatively brief life.

I want to tell you about him. Jeremy is the guy who wreaked a nauseating amount of charisma. He was always ready to bat in conversation, no matter the topic. It's what he thrived on. He was a double major in psychology and philosophy, and that level of ambition was par for him. He is the embodiment of /r/athiesm. Every action in his life was parallel to a logic based idea within a realm of rational thought. These actions were not devoid of empathy, in fact it was actually quite the opposite: he felt that religion is more restricting to ones ability to love, rather than enhancing it. No belief system should employ you to use or excuse any level of hate. His personal moral system was built on a foundation of logic, he pursued altruism, and fought ignorance every step of the way, in every capacity it showed itself.

He loved so many people, he loved Jordan and Chris and me, and he loved our band as an entity. The only way I can think to pass on his legacy is to share this story with you and to share our music with you. Please share this with anyone you feel inclined, and please download our album for free so that you can keep a part of him with you and understand one of his many facets. I don't remember if I clarified before, but he was our bassist.

Thank you for reading this. I did this to help myself grieve, and I really needed to finally post on here that I received my gift. To my wonderful santa, thank you. Jeremy loved your gift for me as much as I did. I'm glad I got to dick around with it on his last living day. Thank you again.

Here is the link to our album if you want to listen to it and download it for free: http://georgeorwell.bandcamp.com/

_