Remembering my friend, Andy DeLong today...

My favorite joke whenever I saw Andy was “ah…Andy…the brother I never wanted“. He tortured me at any given opportunity. For instance: I had just gotten my new car, first car I ever bought on my own. I was driving down the road not so long after buying it, and kept getting honked at by other drivers. I thought “man, I look better in this car than I thought!”. Sadly, no - I caught a glimpse in my review mirror finally of the bumper sticker Andy had placed on the back window that said “Honk if you love Barry Manilow”. I retaliated, of course, by putting an entire deck of cards inside his gas tank door, so that when he opened it they would all fall out. But I have to admit, it wasn’t as good as that bumper sticker. Once, Andy was running down the hall at RE/MAX to get a call in his office that I was passing from the switchboard,. As he ran by I yelled after him “Run, Forrest, Ruuuun”…to which , he just collapsed laughing in the hall, sort of “hawing” as he did when he laughed, and breathed “put it to voice mail, just put it to voice mail”. He was always better than me at these exchanges we used to have - he used to make fun of my name, which was Tammy Jo Bradley (at the time)…now, if you’ve ever seen a show called “Petticoat Junction” you know that all the girls on the show were named “________ Jo Bradley”…so he would see me and sing “There’s a little hotel called the Shady Rest at the Junction”…and I would make fun of his name play in his advertising saying “DeLong way is dorkier and thiftier with a dollar”. He called pregnancy my “fat stage”. And I would say, “well my belly will go away, but your feet will always be that abnormally large“. Once, he couldn’t think of a comeback to me, and said “well…your Mama!”, and then stopped and said “no wait…I like your Mama”. Everything was so genuine with him…his faith was real, his joy was real, his emotions were real. Ben and I got to see him a couple of weeks before he passed. There’ve been some tough times in real estate here over the last year and a half or so, and we were lamenting on the beginnings of the downward turn. Andy walked to Ben, put his hand on his shoulder and said “Don’t worry, Ben. I’ve prayed about it…I know you may not believe the way I do, but I know - we’ve done this right. WE are going to make it through all this.” Never, ever, in all the teasing or torment did he ever put me down, never ever did I feel offended or that it was in bad nature. So the truth is he is exactly the brother I wanted. And he was the friend that I had, and I am so much better for it. I miss him, and am thinking of his wonderful family today.