I want to sing his name.

[WilliamPitt]

There was this guy I met in college who had the wicked pissah Woburn accent. He was ten feet tall, with bright green eyes, and handsome in the way that makes you hate handsome guys like that just a little bit even though he's you're friend. The funniest guy in the room, and hilariously OCD; we'd rearrange the books in his dorm room ever so slightly, and he'd walk in, put the books back in order again, sit down, crack a beer, and tell us to fuck ourselves with this megawatt smile on his face. Smart as all get-out; he took a class titled "How to Make an Atomic Bomb" thinking it was a history class, found out it was a hardcore physics/engineering class, stuck with it, and aced the goddam thing anyway.

After college, I moved to San Francisco, and bugged him to move there until he did. He bought two motorcycles and promptly wrecked them both, but made a home for himself, and we had good great grand and wild times. I left to return to Boston after two years, and he stayed, and a few years later I happened to look across the bar at the Plough & Stars in Cambridge, and big as life, there he was. We were roommates on Washington Street in Jamaica Plain, and on Wellington Street in the South End after that, and then he met a no-shit goddess, and moved out to get married.

I just found out that he died on Monday. My heart is...what? I don't frankly know. I have no words for how I feel.

His name was Brian Fitzgerald - "Fitz" to his friends - and he was one of the most remarkable people I've ever been privileged to know.

[femmocrat]

1. I'm so sorry, Will.

I recently found out that my adorable HS boyfriend... who I still dream about after all these years.... had suffered a stroke. It was like getting punched in the gut.

I'm sure your friend was way younger than us. I know you must be in shock. He sounds like an incredible man.

[LiberalLoner]

2. I'm sorry for your loss.

Beautiful tribute to your friend.

[In_The_Wind]

3. Rest in peace, Brian Fitzgerald.

[Oldboldandresolved]

4. Gratitude

To be grateful that he had been in your life.

[ColesCountyDem]

5. I'm so sorry for your loss, Will.

[ellennelle]

6. your heavy heart

nothing can be said. i am so sorry he's gone, but glad you knew him.

he must have been glad he knew you, too.

the plough & stars, eh? haunted that place myself in the mid-90s.

hang in there, dude; these are times when the pain itself becomes the balm.

[niyad]

7. so very sorry for your loss, william. may all who loved him find peace.

[CaliforniaPeggy]

8. In Fitz's Memory, my dear Will...

For tomorrow we laugh and tomorrow we cry
Tomorrow we dance and tomorrow we die
And tomorrow you will be my yesterday song
And I would die richer for having you known

-- "Jo'rneyman's Song," Barleyjuice