Sam at his house.
There were guitars everywhere. "How can you be sad," he would say, playing a loud and buttery lick, "when you can start the day like this?"
Sam always gave me peptalks about life.
It never entered my mind that he would take his 
own life.
Sam had friends spanning many eras, and in his last years, he had shifts and rounds. Everyone at his memorial cried for a different Sam. The Sam I knew and loved, with whom I shared stages, and viciously fought with, is gone, along with all the other Sams. 
This was our local hot spot. Sam would drop in at Rubber Soul almost every night on his rounds. Very often, he'd sit in with whoever was playing. Unfortunately, Rubber Soul died right after Sam did.
I can't move forward Sam, and I can't go back. What is life without you? You were the best friend I ever had. I know you had a jillion friends, but for me it was you, just you. I'm hoping if I share our story, I can let you rest in peace. I can move on and make you proud of me. Right now all I can do is cry.
I could spit bullets, and Sam would cheer me on too. His eulogies all have him frolicking in heaven with his wife Dido, who preceded him in death by nine years. Dido was perfectly quirky and I know Sam loved her dearly, but he did not die with her. Maybe it takes the sting out to give Sam’s death the stamp of a broken-hearted husband, but I personally do not think his suicide can be so neatly explained. I am one of the cast of characters in Sam’s “Lost Years,” the time so many of his eulogists seem to deny.
Knowing what I know now, I agree that Sam might have been close to suicide in 1998, but then he met a few reasons to live, I, KD Rouse, happening to be one of them. You can say what you want about Sam, but he filled his last nine years. Packed them.
Sam shot himself on May 5, 2007, with one neat, clean bullet through his head. May, June, July, August, September, October, 1,2,3,4,5,6 months ago, and all I can do is cry, cry, cry. I miss him to the marrow, and I am jealous of a dead woman.
Charismatic, enigmatic, master guitarist Sam Moss: The world should have known his name. Now he’s dead.
May 5, 2007, chokes me like no other day. I can’t move forward. I can’t go back. My lightest moments: catfights in heaven.
Everyone who thinks I am a loser is right. I couldn’t keep a great man alive and maybe I had the opportunity if I had been better, kinder, stronger.
So what if I was an enabler along with it? I am an enabler. That’s all I’ve ever been in relationships is an enabler. Why stop with Sam? At least he’d be alive.
“Redonkulous,” says Sam.
Maybe if I had been able to be enabled, Sam would be alive. He was very nurturing, Sam was. He loved to cook and-
“Hit some licks, KD,” says Sam. “You know you’ll feel better.”
