A Letter Not Finished: September 25, 1997

Don

Don, I dont know exactly what this will end up saying. I struggle to understand, to comphrend, to grasp, to somehow get a hold on what is happening with and for you. I know that you are very ill and dying, a word so terribly hard to say or write, but it doesnt mean anything to me other than you wont be here. I know I didnt handle my dad's or mother's dying very well. Maybe in the scheme of things, they were practice for what is occurring now. I know that I want to do better than I did when my folks passed on. They like you, had some time. But I allowed myself to get caught up in either the focus of my work ( when my dad was ill) or in the case of my mother, I really did not allow myself to fully connect with her and instead avoided the issues and paid more attention to helping to manage her care. I regret that.

I cant know how it is for you, the pain, the useless suffering, worrying about Jane and Jeff, the uncertaincies, the puzzelments, the meaning of life, and of life so shortly lived. I wish I could shoulder some of that for you. But I cant. I think I tried when we were kids to step into your space. I know I did and I think you let me at that time and you let my folks weigh anchor for you as well. You needed it at the time. And I can say without any hesitation, I needed the reltionship as well. You were and are my first and only closest friend. No others have ever reached the level of closeness that I feel exists between you and me. Without knowing it, now looking back I realize I felt your pain then, the injustices you endured, the rejections you suffered and I alinged myself with them for you. And you know, Don, I can truthfully say that was the beginning of my social work career as I look back upon it. So you see, you had a major role in whatever successes I can claim as a clinician.....wheter you want to claim any of me or not ( who knows, I could still become famous one of these days, and Jeff could then say, "hey, Ted and my dad were best friends!"....

Thanksgiving Letter: Nov. 28, 1997

Don:

Its now the day after Thanksgiving. I initially composed this letter last week while you were still in Stockton. I had not reviewed it, but came back to it tonight. This follows a rather frank discussion with Jane last night about how you are doing. After she and I finished talking, I wrote another poem letting out my anger at what has happened for you. It poured out of my heart no less than the others I have written. In fact I was rather surprised at how it developed. It too, like the one I wrote about "Thinking About You Often", began as a last sentence in the letter I wrote to Jane and from there it just took off with a power of its own!

This writing ability that has developed with me over the last year or so, but taken on more poignancy for me since your illness, is strange for me. It is almost like something else is guiding my thoughts and hands to place on a "tablet" words which must come out of my inner self, for if they do not I become "unsettled", anxious and unable to focus on any other daily tasks. People who have read my work suggest that I publish them. Maybe someday that will come to pass, but if my words touch others, and if my words convey to you and Jane what is in my heart....then for now that is good enough for me.

So, Don, what follows is my original letter I wrote while you were still in St. Joseph's but had not sent until now. What I had struggled to express then is still in my heart tonight. And while this week as now come and past, I will be trying to come to you within the next week.

Jane left a message on my phone answering system early this morning telling me that she was leaving to come up to see you. She said you were not doing so well. Don, I hope that there has been or will be a turn around and that you can be stabilized for a while longer. I want to make it down there soon, before you decide to check out. I wouldn't blame you if you did, I know you must be miserable beyond description!

What happened to you last weekend was not fair...but then I know that there is no such thing as "fair" in this world.....I know that it was not the real you I was talking to last Friday night....we've known each other for over 40 years, and I would certainly know, even without my experiences as a social worker, that you were experiencing a medical crisis. Now having said that....and getting it out of the way I can go on to what else I want to tell you.

If you can hold on at all, Don, do. Wait awhile for me to get there. Maybe by mid-week this coming week? It is the holiday week and flights might be bad, but it'll work out some way. But, listen Don, if you cant hang in....and I dont want you to if it causes you more misery.....I'll know and understand.

So let me my brother, write to you things we have spoke about and maybe some we have not.....Up front I want to say to you again and again how much I love you and how thankful I am for having you as a friend through all these years. While time slips by and times are lost, periods drift along and contact is temporarily lost. But the soul connection remains intact. In one conversation either with you or Jane not so long ago, there was a comment about having gone a long period without contact between us.....You know, I cant recall such a period.

It wasn't long after my divorce that Jeff had his first episode...I recall that day very vividly when you called me. I was in the dinning room when your call came, and I remember the confusion and questioning and concern that came from you. I am mentioning this time only because thereafter, it seems to me, our contact was pretty steady. There may have been times since then when periods of less immediate contact were made.....We hadnt seen each other for a number of years after my divorce, until that time I flew down for an interview in Sacramento and you got lost coming to pick me up and then lost again trying to get up back to Lodi!!! He he he, I remember pointing out that we had made one large circle, I had recognized the street where we had started and came back to....yup, your sense of direction is really something else...are you sure you dont need one of us to get you to where your headed next.......just kidding, Don...I am sure you've got it figured out. :)

Don, I am trying to make this light, but I dont feel so light. I never gave a thought to needing to write something like this. Had you? We had such a carefree time for a few short years after we first met, didn't we! Ah, yes! My first experiences in pushing a car cause it ran out of gas, the first time of hearing and engine blow while driving along...actually there were two...your Merc as we were coming up Barber Blvd. toward your mother's house and then when we snuck off to Coos Bay with the folk's car and it blew up! Shoot we were the lucky ones weren't we, couldn't get away with anything! Course, it would have helped had you not told mom and dad that you saw Judge Swanton when we were in Coos Bay! The one and only time I ever saw you cry....when that came out of your mouth, my folks looked at each other, me at you and you jumped up from the dinner table and ran to the bedroom in tears! Not, as I knew then and as I know today, because you were caught in a lie, but because you knew you had disappointed the folks. They knew how you felt, Don and never condemned you for that. You know that dont you, surely you do! Heck you were the one who then worked with what is his name (oh yes it was Virgle!) to fix dad's car. I think you were 16 and me 17 at the time. Quite a dramatic time for both of us!

But Don, there were other times to that we both can recall, and some that one or the other will not vividly remember. But that is how life is. What is important or special for one may not be the same for another. Geeish...one just came to mind! The time after my brother left for Army training and you and I went on to "keep company" with some of his old girl friends...names escape me. We went to a drive in, three of us, the girl, you and me. We were all in the front seat. You were positioning yourself to put your arm around her, and so was I...I got there first, and when you were being sneaky, moving on her and slowly moving your left arm up and around her shoulder...you ran smack dab into my hand...boy were you pissed at me....the look you gave me was something else!!! Whoa!

And then there was the time, for whatever reason we didn't have the car, we were hitch hiking to her house and we were picked up by the police! You told them we were on our way to your "sisters", so they called your bluff when we got to the house. Kept me in the car and let you go up to the house, waiting to see what you would do! Later, after we were let go, you said how scared you were and that you were glad that the door was locked forcing you to knock, otherwise you would have had to just walk in and what a scene that would have been!! Gripes, another new journey for me, me who had never hitched hiked or "talked" to police....you carried it off well!

Course I could flash this way past this time in our journey together, and recall some of the crazy things that went on in Coos Bay after we both got back there in our 20's! Now those were some times, but by then I think I was able to match you with escapades. There were trips out to the boonies, beyond Libby ( guess this was before we were 21!) to drink with a bunch of guys, I passed out, remember waking up somewhere after you had dragged me into where ever we were staying! Oh yes, and then the Bell Boa! And Mike and Friedia's place on New Years, and then the fire at yours and Chuck's apt.!

I remember to how sad I was when you decided to leave Coos Bay and you had asked me to write the resume for you. I really didn't want to do that. Didn't want you and Jane and Jeff to go. I can recall setting in your Empire little apartment. Jeff in his stroller, Jane sitting on something, and me using your drafting board (which I had kept for you over all the preceding years) writing the resume and really thinking , "do I want to do this, have a hand in helping Don leave here?" I think that was one of the hardest things for me to do....although Don, now doing this is much more difficult.

You know, Don, all of what I am writing and trying to get to rather poorly...is to say and let you know that through all the years, from the time we first met...you 14 and me 15 or somewhere in that age range, that you and only you have been my closest friend.

Until our relationship I can not recall anyone else with whom I felt such a kinship with. But I think our relationship came at a time when I needed a friend, that unique time in everyone's life when a confidant is sought, when trust and loyalty is needed and a strong companion-ship is required to face the struggles for those critical teen years of development.

Regardless, and beyond my ability to express on paper, the bond between us took and it was like brothers...and the test of time has born that out. We have both since those days taken different directions in our lives....directions, if it weren't for the earlier strongly formed bonds, would have resulted in drifting apart. But those ties we made early on were the foundation that cemented forever our ties to each other. It is like the building under construction, the foundation laid, the framing erected, the walls placed and the roof put on. Those remain in place never changing. Only the outward appearance does through painting and reroofing....the structure remains ( unless of course Jane decides to add a room or two.....te he he he!). Hope that makes sense to you.

So no one else has ever stepped into that same position with me as you had and have. Isn't it strange Don, or I should say, isn't it interesting how that works? Maybe we all are only destined throughout life to have one chance and only one chance at such a meaningful and deep relationship with someone we call friend. Marriage, at least as I experienced it, is not the same. Your the expert here though, so your thoughts on that would be more valid than mine...maybe I'll ask Jane about that sometime. You think that would be ok?

Don, simply stated, and where I began this narrative, if love can be measured, quantified and qualified, seen or portrayed in any fashion, then it must include what has been in my heart and soul since way back then when Ellen ask if I would meet her son and take him around Portland, go to a movie or something. We were not born as brothers, we are not of the same line, but Don, no man could love another as a brother any more than I do of you.

I am proud of what you have accomplished. I am pleased with what you have done. I have always been happy for you, Jane and Jeff. I was pleased beyond any thing that can be described when you were my best man.....my best man, my best friend, my best buddy, my best brother......I have been proud to talk about my friend Don who works on high end cars, who has customers that come from the Bay area just so they can have their car worked on by my best friend. I have been disappointed not in what you have done, but have been disappointed in what I have not done and, thus, disappointing you. I know I have. You have made the grade, Don, for both of us. You have established what we all want, you have done it, you and Jane....and I love you for that. I can point to you and say, see he made it, and he is my best friend....and maybe, just maybe somewhere along the line, I was a part of that which made you so fine, my best friend, Don.

Don, I would rather be there telling you this...I dont know that you would listen though. You'd probably shrug me off, be embarrassed and deny the importance of you to me. I am, tonight saddened beyond that ever experienced...and hope that I shall never again be faced with such grief. But I gladly accept this pain for if I did not have it, I would have not known you. As you leave this earthly existence a very large part of me goes with you. It is strange to have this feeling....but at the same time a comforting one, cant explain that dichotomy though....dont know how to account for it. I am in my bedroom writing this on the computer. Out in the living room where it has been now for these past number of months is your picture, a photo of a young man looking happy, pleased and satisfied with himself. A picture of you which shall remain as the memory of you.

Good-bye my dear, dear friend the tears that are now streaming down my face are for the times we had, those we wont see together and for the deep and boundless loss I feel. Please look upon me and know that I love you.....please take my hand and hold it just once more, let me put my arm around you and give you a hug and a manly embrace and say for the last time, good-by Don..... my brother, I love you.

Ted                               tedc Nov.28, 1997