On Thursday I did an online search for an old cyberfriend who hasn't posted in several years and I found his obituary.
David Harold Barlow (1942 - 2020)
I was also saddened to learn that Tony, the second of his five children, had died suddenly just a few months before him.
We all called him Putz because that was how he referred to himself in his blog. He also said that he was an ignoble enigma. David Barlow may have been an enigma, but he was never an ignoble one.
His family may never see this, but my condolences go out to his wife Karma Lee, his son Daniel, and the rest of his family. I am so sorry for your loss.
The world has lost a unique character.
I took a while to get on Putz's wavelength but I always knew I liked him.
ReplyDeleteRIP, David "Putz" Barlow. I'll meet ya in the sky
kylie, a great part of gettting on Putz’s wwavelength involved learninging to deel for wiith his unique spelling and punctuation<<<< >>>>>> < > < >
ReplyDeleteIt is always sad to lose someone you cared about. It's hard to know what has happened to some bloggers we become used to seeing every week.
ReplyDeleteEmma, some bloggers just stop suddenly and are never heard from again. In Putz’s case, he had indicated on several occasions that his wife was not id favor of him blogging.
DeleteI don't believe I knew this particular blogger but I am certainly sorry to hear of his passing. It is sad to see our friends go and especially sad to hear his son died before him.
ReplyDeleteBonnie, he stopped at the end of 2013 after reporting on yet another successful one-of-a-kind annuals Christmas Eve family Christmas pageant in which he played a sheep (lines: baa baa baa). Nine of his children and grandchildren had been baby Jesus over the years. My favorite line in the 2013 pageant was one he put into the mouth of one of the wise men: “Do you know how hard it is to follow a star?”
DeleteYes, I’m sure losing Tony so unexpectedly was a blow.
It's very unsettling to realise that someone you imagined was still around and perhaps even occasionally thinking of you passed away some time ago. I discovered that friend I'd lost touch with and hoped to see one day again had died ten years previously. It took me some time to get over it.
ReplyDeleteTasker, we imagine when we are young that things are permanent when they are most definitely temporary. As we age (as we inevitably do) and begin to lose others of significance to us, we come to acknowledge with Heraclitus that the only permanent thing is change and that we ourselves will also “shuffle off this mortal coil” at some point. People of faith (I am one of them) do not find this fact synonymous with “ceasing to be,” however. To be absent from the body, St. Paul said, is to be present with the Lord.
DeleteI apologize for waxing more and more philosophical as I my days are waning.
There was no one quite like Putz. He had a unique take on things and his use of the English language followed no discernible rules. Farewell Putz!
ReplyDeleteNeil, he called us twins on more than one occasion, especially after he read some of my quirkier posts by “guest blogger”Billy Ray Barnwell and a non-fiction post I wrote about my wife’s parents meeting and marriage (being Mormon, Putz enjoyed genealogical research). If we were twins, we were fraternal ones, not identical. I certainly couldn”t mangle written English the way he did even if I tried! Some people are carbon copies of others. David Barlow was an original.
ReplyDelete