A Merciful Friend

Upper Mesa Falls, Idaho.

I wasn’t familiar with Thai cuisine, so I invited my friend to order for both of us. He did! He ordered half the menu. They filled the table with food. We ate, laughed, and visited for hours. It’s been twenty years and I still laugh about it.

He was among the smartest people I’ve known; well-educated, multilingual, blind to people’s gender, race, religion, age, economic status, or nationality. On a European trip, I heard him speak eight languages, including Russian to the woman making up his hotel room, and Icelandic to a pair of tourists needing directions. I loved him.

In his last year, my friend’s quick wit slowed slightly. His engaging demeanor flattened. I knew something wasn’t quite right. Then he was gone. Two years later, his ashes scattered in one of his favorite spots, I still reflexively pulled my phone from my pocket only to realize I couldn’t call him. I wanted him to still be alive.

Then I saw him in a dream. Expressionless in a chair, he neither moved nor spoke. I understood I was seeing what he’d have been had he lived. Continued life isn’t always a blessing. I was so grateful he’d passed.

Sir William Ostler, a seventeenth-century physician, referred to pneumonia as “the old man’s friend.” My longtime compadre hadn’t passed from pneumonia, but I understood Ostler’s statement. I still miss my friend, though I know his passing was timely.

As hard as it may be to accept, death is sometimes a merciful friend.