A year ago today I walked in to my jiu jitsu class, got changed, went out onto the mats and started doing my regular mediocre type warmup. A routine developed from laziness and knowledge from a dude on instagram, a physical therapist over at Vert in Santa Monica, that I had a private training session with in order to, in my own words, “Get injured less.” The warmup consists of isometric movements of the joints in order to get more synovial fluid moving through them. He also showed me ways to improve flexibility without static stretching, something different called dynamic stretching where you force the muscles to work into the areas where you want to be more flexible and then work the opposite way.

My coach, Scott, came onto the mats with a hang dog look and started to speak.

“I just want to make a quick announcement,” he said. ” I don’t know how to say this, so I’ll just say it.” The pause was torture. For a moment I thought he was gong to say he was moving out of Los Angeles, but the tears in his eyes told a different story. “Ray Diaz killed himself yesterday.”

The bomb dropped we all looked around. I froze. I sat down in total shock.

“I’m not going to teach today,” he said. “You guys can hang here and do what you want to do, but I’m still digesting all of this.”

Scott walked off. I sat there and looked at the others who knew Ray. They looked back at me. I had seen him just four or five days earlier. Rolled with him, both of us all laughs as we tried to simulate killing one another.

Raymond “Hawk” Diaz was one of the first guys I met when I first started training at 10th Planet Jiu Jitsu. A tough as nails, sweet dude. That’s one of the things you learn right away when you start tangling with grown men and women who are trained to snap bones and strangle necks. Most of the time they’re really nice, cracking jokes, etc. and then when the bell rings to begin a round of sparring they’re on you like a demon octopus. In the beginning stages, it really fucking hurts. It takes about six months for your body and mind to adapt to the stresses of jiu jitsu. Your bones, your skin, your muscles and tendons need to adjust to having people’s weight on them, grabbing, pulling, attempting to get you to submit to the multitudes of locks and holds that are part of the sport. The mental game is something else entirely. Just having a person, a stranger, that close to you, putting their weight on your ribs is offputting in the beginning. You’ve got to control your breathing in these circumstances, relax, and think even when your brain is going haywire.

Ray was one of the first guys who was “nice” to me. After kicking the living shit out of me he always told me how well I was doing and would give me pointers on how to do better next time. “Keep going,” he always said. The kid was a beast. Not a big guy, but strong as hell with cardio for days. His instagram was full of him performing crazy feats of strength and endurance. He could do a Turkish get up with a 100 pound kettlebell “bottoms up” meaning he held it by the handle with the bulk of the weight toward the ceiling. This is difficult to do with just ten pounds. A normal day to him was going out to the park a busting out five minute rounds of jump rope five times. So, 25 minutes of jump rope with a minute between each round.

Anyway, long story short, I got really into all of it. A little over a year in, I received my blue belt which at our gym is pretty tough to do especially for an older guy. Ray was there during the promotion and he was happier than anyone else, even myself.

“I told you,” he said. “Never quit.”

About six months later we piled into a car for a BJJ tournament in Vegas. Me, Ray, his girlfriend Kim, and our buddy Fuku. It was my first and I had no idea what to expect. The whole team, over a dozen of us, rented out a big, airBnB house with a pool and hot tub.

I didn’t do so well. I went up against some MMA fighter guy who I took down quickly and swept, but then in typical fashion I froze up when I had the guy in my sights and he ended up staying on top for most of the match and tiring me out. I had held my breath at the onset of the match and gassed out about a minute in. At the end, my heart was beating out of my chest.

Ray, on the other hand, won his division in spectacular fashion. He steamrolled through the first couple of guys and then went up against some guy he had to tap twice in order to finish. He had the dude deep in a triangle and the guy verbally tapped to Ray but the ref didn’t hear it. There was a moment of confusion and Scott went out on the mats to yell at the ref. Everything, including the clock was reset. Ray seemed deflated from it all and his opponent took him down and dominated him.

The clock ticked down. If no one won this match it would be declared a draw, but Ray’s opponent had a few points already. There was less than a minute. We all watched. The whole team. The timer ticked away, each second painful to look at. Then, in a storm of energy, with fifteen seconds left, Ray somehow locked in a triangle on the guy while in the bottom position. Holy shit! We all cheered him on. He grabbed the guy’s head and squeezed with everything he had and with just a few seconds on the clock, the guy tapped.

Ray immediately jumped up and shouted. It was one of those great come from behind victories. Yes, a small microcosm in the form of jiu jitsu but exciting for all of us to see.

That night back at the airBnB we all drank beer and had a good time. Ray got pretty hammered and started telling stories about his time in the military and when he was a kid growing up in Orange County. Crazy recollections about his time in a gang where he was initiated by pointing a gun at someone and pulling the trigger. Luckily there were no bullets in the gun. It was just a test. Yeah, I was a bad kid growing up but nothing like this level as he told story after story about life as a teenage gang member.

Enlisting in the military was the best thing he ever did. He became his platoon leader quickly, and did two tours but a tragic accident, a mine exploding, sent him to the hospital and injured him bad enough that he could never return. I realized he never changed in the locker room with the rest of us such was the extent of his wounds.

At his memorial, each person that went up to speak about Ray said the same thing in a different way. That he was always there to help. Even I went up to speak in front of everyone. Ray took time out of his own life to make sure everyone connected to him was doing ok. The more people spoke, the more I realized he was their hero too. The sheer amount of people that spoke about his contributions to their life was staggering. A mixture of family, guys from our gym, clients, and super jacked trainers from his job over at Equinox. His death made no sense, but it never does. Those we love and hold dear in our lives arrive and depart at the most unexpected times. That’s how it works. Many of the people I know who are the toughest sons of bitches you’ll ever know are also the most introspective and sensitive, it’s part of the reason they’re so tough. Life has made them that way in order to harden them. Ray was one of the toughest motherfuckers I’ve ever met but you’d never know it unless you tangled with him. He had many gears and each time I ever tried to ramp up against him he simply downshifted and hit the gas.

On this day, the day I heard the news, and every other year on this day, I will think about how he entered and exited my life. Miss you buddy.