In Memory of Aaron Frisch

Aaron Frisch, 1975-2013

  Aaron Frisch had agreed to help me out with the writing on this blog if need be. He wouldn't have enjoyed being the subject of it, because he never sought the spotlight.
  Aaron died on Monday, and I'm far from done searching for answers on why he's gone, on why he did it to himself. I can only think that he was pained in a way that he couldn't relate.
  But let me say that he was kind. Let me say that he was one hell of an editor, reader, and writer. Let me say that he was a sports fan, a T-Wolves fan, and let me now remember the night we drove up from Mankato to see the Wolves at the end of the KG-era, a game where the Wolves ended a 19-game win streak by the Steve Nash-led Suns and Garnett scored a franchise-record 55 points. Let me tell you of the good conversation we had on the way up to the Twin Cities, during the game, and on the way back down home. Let me tell you about a hundred or more walks I took with this guy while playing rounds of golf, about his looping swing, his smashing drives off the tee, his spot-on wit, his striding grace over grass and through trees.
  A more pleasant person than him would be nearly impossible to find. He was my friend. It hurts that he is gone.


You Didn't Say

You didn't say, but how do

years grind to this? In

a flush

of pheasants, a garroted

moon, blood like nosegays

in the January

white, then a dead

stare at a cold

horizon.

 I lie

in my blue reading room

where you left a shadow

hulking

upon the wall,

the hours you passed

here, thin-smiled and meek,

drip from the form’s

skeletal fingers

onto the floor where

the words you

spoke, rare

in sum, dense

in sense, collect

like bird feathers on snow.

     --excerpted from a poem written by Nicole Helget, my wife, for Aaron Frisch

Bobby Jo's Mankato City League Basketball Team, 2011-12.
Top, L-R: J. LeBoutillier, W. Remmert, A. Frisch, G. Amundson, J. Miller. Bottom, L-R: M. Carr, K. West, N. LeBoutillier, J. Martens.