Passings

Mr James Richard Hunt January 11, 1963 - January 15, 2008

ALVARADO -- James Richard Hunt Jr 45 passed from this life trucking his way to heaven on January 14,2008. Funeral; 2pm Monday Jan. 21,2008 at Emerald Hills Memorial Chapel. Burial; Emerald Hills Memorial park. Visitation; Sunday 2-5pm Jan.20,2008 at Emerald Hills Funeral Home. He left this world doing what fulfilled him, he loved his family and enjoyed seeing new things through his grandchildren's eyes. He is survived by his children; James Dean Hunt,Sandra Hunt, Joshua Hunt and Justin Patton, grandchildren,Kyle, Kaleb and Laken Hunt, aunts and uncles and a host of other family and friends. James was six feet tall, well maybe five-eleven. He weighed three hundred and fifteen pounds at death. He was egregrious, sometimes bubbly, and sometimes glum, but always friendly, never met a stranger. Always supportive, and sometimes a pain in my butt. He was my dear friend. He was a truck driver. He was a father, and a husband. He was in the middle of a project to rebuild his barn and corral so that he would have a place for the pony he was going to buy his grandson this year. In his work, he was one of the best drivers I have ever met. Like all drivers, he was eccentric to some extent. He was opinionated. He always wore a cowboy hat, sweat-stained, brownish ranch-cut stetson. The kind that George Strait made famous, but in a darker color. he also always had on a worn pair of brown cowboy boots. They looked like they'd been through the war, or something. He wore Eli shirts, and wranglers. The jeans usually sagging badly. He never had the money to buy himself clothes, his kids always came first, and lately, his grandkids. He was divorced, but was still very much attached to his wife. He never called her his ex. To the day he died, she was his wife. She was deeply in love with James, but needed a normalcy in he rrelationship that he could never provide. Both of them dated, and he'd had an on and off, love-hate relationship with another woman for several years, but i used to tell him, he might as well give that up because he still was in love with his wife. He'd grin and say, "I know it, Fred." I had a rollover wreck a year and a half ago. I was not wearing my seatbelt. When I started getting around again, a couple of months later, James came up to me in our local coffee shop, grinned and grabbed my shoulder, "Fred," He said, "It's good to see you up and around. You know the only reason you're here is the Grace of God. You really shouldn't have survived that wreck. I think God saved you for that little baby's sake. You'd better hit your knees buddy, and thank God for saving your life." That was James. One time, I set him up on a blind date with my girlfriend's best friend. It was a total disaster. She said that he spent the whole night talking about his wife, his off-at-the-time ex-girlfriend, and his kids. She said to never set her up on a date again, thank-you-very-much. I laughed about it, but never got involved in James' dating life again. I even told him I wasn't going to go there ever again. Thing is, he'd asked me to set the whole thing up in the first place. He thought she was pretty. In his own way, he was trying to open up to her, sort of let ehr into his life. He didn't realize that was inappropriate. When he figured it out, he just laughed, "Well Fred, I guess I sure blew that one, didn't I? Oh well, there's other ones, and maybe next time I'll keep my big trap shut! HAHAHAHA" James signed his pickup over to his daughter, so that she wouldn't have to rely on anyone else to get her to work, and back. For himself, if he couldn't drive his big truck wherever he needed to go, he'd call me or one of his other friends for a ride. That was James. He had fought stomach cancer to a standstill a few years back. He had a peptic ulcer from worry, and his thyroid gland had up and quit on him about ten years ago. He couldn't afford to pay for his house, fix up the barn, and by his medicine all at teh same time, so his ulcer had been acting up and his thyroid levels were non-existant for about the last three months, but even though he'd ask for a ride, now and then, he'd never ask for help getting his meds. I would have gladly done that for him, but he made sure that I didn't know. His daughter told me after he died. James rolled his truck over last Tuesday. He wasn't wearing his seatbelt either. Where my rollover had thrown me to the right, and had trapped my left leg, keeping me inside the cab of the truck, his threw him out the driver's side window. The truck rolled over on top of him. Another one of our buddies was following him, and had stopped and run up to the cab of James' truck. He said that he hollered, "James, are you alright?" James looked up at him and said, "Get me out of here!" He said that just after James said that, his eyes rolled up and he quit breathing. They had to get a wrecker to pull the truck up off of the body before they could move it. I was talking to his daughter tonight, and she said that he rdad had called her earlier that day, out of the blue and said that he wanted her to know that he loved her. She said, "I know, dad. I love you too." James said, "No, I want you to know that I really do love you, even though sometimes, I've been pretty mean to you, yelled at you, or whatever. I just want you to know that I love you, I always have loved you, and I always will love you, no matter what. Ok?" She said, "Ok, dad. I love you too." She said that was the last words they exchanged. I don't think he knew that he was going to die that day. Not consciously, anyway. I know that he was tired. He was tired of his lifestyle, tired of trucking, and never having enough, enough time, or money. He was going to look into another way of making a living, he'd said recently. He wasn't sure what yet. I guess it didn't matter after all. Anyway, the fact that I lived through a horrible accident, and one of my best friends died in an almost exactly the same accident less than two years later has gottne me contemplative. You cna believe me when I tell you I came home tonight, and hugged my little two year old a little tighter, and told her I love her a little more often tonight than I usually do, and when it came time to put her to bed, we prayed for our friend James, and his daughter too. We all just take so much for granted, and the reality is, we should never fall into that trap. We should be grateful for the too-high grass, the idiot driver, and all the othe rlittle annoyances we have everyday. We should never take the "I love you's" for granted, or th elittle things we should do for each other, because it can all be gone in the next heartbeat. We should be kind to one-another, always taking each other's frailties, and weaknesses into account, and balancing them against the strengths that each and every one of us has. We should remember the five-year olds that we were once. The wonder and joy that each day, each breath brought into our lives. That five-year old is still there in all of us. We've just learned to cover him or her up, to shelter and protect the innocense and wonder that we all still feel. We should let that out a little bit more. Be kind to each other, my friends. You never know when one of your friends will be remembering you this way. Hopefully, we all will have friends who care for us, and who'll remember us for the friends that we were.