R.I.P., Kiyoshi...

04-10-07

Today I really felt the pain of true loss for the first time in my life. My father's cousin Kiyoshi passed away. His sister found his body at his home and we're guessing he passed away on Saturday. It's weird because I was just talking to someone about how I'm not close at all with any of my extended family, which is true, but there's always an exception to the rule. Kiyoshi was that exception. He was the one member of my extended family that I kept in contact with on a regular basis and whenever we would get together we would watch really awful movies for hours on end. It's hard to believe I just saw him a week and a half ago and now he's gone.

I was always a weird kid growing up, but it was Kiyoshi who is either the one to thank or the one to blame for me being who I am (and by that I mean a total weirdo)...all it took was showing me "Army of Darkness" on New Year's Day so many many years ago and I got hooked on B-movie cinema and really off the wall stuff. He was a constant inspiration to me and always a being of fascination. When my father came to this country it was Kiyoshi who took him under his wing and showed him around and played all sorts of wonderful classical music for my father. He had such an amazing knowledge of classical music and culture...but at the same time had a thing for sci-fi, fantasy, horror, anything weird... New Year's Day was always interesting in that he could be talking to my father about Verdi's Requiem and all sorts of composers and operas and then turn to me to talk about zombie movies. Kiyoshi was the coolest dude I ever met in my entire life and it trips me out even more that I was related to him. I have nothing but good things to say about him and all my memories of him were happy ones...even when he was miserable he was always in good spirits...I always said to my parents that he was probably the happiest dude I know...

Kiyoshi, all I can say is that I will miss you so fucking much. You were such a great friend to me. There is a deep sadness in my heart and it pains me that I'm going to be living the rest of my life without you in it, but I will always have and cherish the memories. So goodbye, my friend, until we meet again...in the words of Ash, HAIL TO THE KING!