This weekend my dear – and very pregnant – friend Angi had a baby shower.

“Pumpkin seed” is Angi’s first.
This was also my first baby shower.

I know husbands, boyfriends, significant others and the like who have attended baby showers, but I never had.

I was feeling a variety of feelings as the moment to leave for the party arrived:

Today when asked to describe me in one word Jocelyn “Jozey” Wichterman described me as passionate. While I humbly smirked when I read it, she’s right, I am passionate.

Yesterday’s tragic death of Avenged Sevenfold’s drummer The Rev [James Owen Sullivan] drives my passion into a flame.

Chains

Several years ago while having lunch with Heather Crimmins she introduced me to Avenged Sevenfold. Over the years I realized that Avenged Sevenfold’s lyrics spoke to people; they touched wounded souls:

“Tormented young with no souls, haunting me
Pain in their lives all they know is misery
Take these chains away that are holding me down” [Eternal Rest]