bright are the stars that shine, dark is the sky
Remembering a friend.
The middle of last month marked the tenth anniversary of my younger brother's death. His heart stopped functioning in his sleep two weeks before his 19th birthday, apparently the result of a long dormant birth defect. One of the more stressful (pardon the pun) events of my own life was having a battery of tests performed on my own heart a few days after that to discover whether or not I was at risk for the same thing.
During most of 1993 I was living a somewhat hermitic life in a little studio apartment in rural New Hampshire. My apartment was so small, in fact, that one had to walk through the bathroom to get from the living room to the kitchen - there was no hallway. This was fine with me, though. The rent was very cheap. I was able to afford all my living expenses by only working two days a week, leaving me plenty of time to read books and watch movies - something I could do from the comfort of my bathtub thanks to the previously mentioned interior layout. Needless to say, such a lifestyle does not lend itself to meeting many new people.
My summer job for several years involved miscellaneous computer work for a non-profit, Gordon Research Conferences. I can say without reservation that working at GRC has been the best job experience of my life, simply because it was such a fun place to be during the summer. My office was a dorm room on the campus of a small New England liberal arts college where GRC staged conferences for scientists. Due to the nature of my job, I tended to have several days a week where I had plenty of free time. This allowed my coworkers and I to spend time walking around the campus, playing pinball in the school lounge, &c. It was at GRC that I met some of my closest friends, although sadly I have lost touch with all of them to some degree.
I met Genevieve at GRC in 1993, a couple of months before my brother died. She and I attended the same high school, but not at the same time, and had many friends in common. One thing about her that amazed me was that we often found each other thinking and saying the same things at the same time, as if we had known each other our entire lives. She was the only, and I mean only, person I've ever known who liked Pink Panther movies. The two of us sat in a completely empty theater together when I took her to "Son of the Pink Panther". I used to sneak into the lecture hall at GRC while she was working as a night projectionist (i.e., "next slide, please") and bring her ice cream. Sometimes, if a particular speaker had no audio-visual requirements for his speech, she and I would walk around the campus in the dark. We were having a great summer.
Then, on what was otherwise a perfectly ordinary Friday afternoon, my younger brother died. And died not in the way one expects 18 year olds to die - a car crash or a drunken accident - but from heart failure while sleeping. He died the death of someone who had already lived a full life, except of course that he hadn't. At the time, I was simply too stunned by the situation to fully emotionally react to it. I was fortunate enough, though, to have a few close friends who were kind enough to put aside everything that was going on in their lives and help me. Genevieve was one of those people.
After that summer, I moved to Rhode Island and Genevieve finished her high school career at a private school in North Carolina. We saw each other again the next summer, then gradually lost touch as both of us moved repeatedly. I've never been good about staying in contact with friends, but I have endeavored to make the effort. Google has helped, lately. I found Genevieve again last year, living in Arizona. Her father had recently died and she was handling his business affairs and the estate. After exchanging letters for a time we started speaking by phone. The last time we spoke, I was telling her something and then stopped, realizing I was rushing the story merely to get it told. Knowing why I stopped, she said to me: "Don't worry, there's plenty of time." But there wasn't plenty of time - that was the last time we spoke, and the last time we will speak. I tried calling again, but could never get her or her voicemail - only a recorded message that "the person you are trying to call is not answering at this time." Again, Google helped. Her local newspaper's web site informed me that a passerby found her body near her home, an apparent suicide. One thing I was sure of was that that couldn't be true. Ultimately, I learned that it wasn't true - someone else had killed her*. No matter, I still have lost my friend, except for the memory of her telling me that we have more time. I hear her telling me that every day now.
* Some time later I found out that this information was wrong as well, and her death was suicide. This fact has left me dwelling on every conversation we had, wondering what clues to her unhappiness I missed.
17.08.2003 © ljr