A long-distance dedication.

We all owe debts to others. Debts that range from shouts at the pub to bacon-saving rides to the airport to borrowed couches to unforgiving currency. Some debts are a moose on the interstate or a racist uncle at Christmas dinner, demanding recognition. Others accumulate over years, steadily, like sand in scrub grass the wind sculpts into dunes.

I owe a debt like this to someone I believe celebrated a wedding this weekend. Can't say with certainty this is so because the milestones of her life are -- justifiably -- no longer any of my goddamned business.

Don't know the propriety of expressing this on a blog but it should be publicly noted that I am forever indebted to this person for propping me up over the course of a decade despite my best efforts to rest face-down in muck of my own making.

I humbly offer my congratulations and best wishes to her and her husband, a man I've met and admire. I know more than most just how lucky he is.

The precise number fails me but she and I have attended more than a handful of Springsteen shows together. That means it's either appropriate or predictable that I borrow the chorus from a new song off Working on a Dream called 'This Life' to sum up my appreciation for the support, hope and grace she showered on me for far longer than I deserved:

This life, this life and then the next
With you I have been blessed
What more can you expect

This life, this life and then the next
I finger the hem of your dress
My universe at rest