Sometimes It’s Sooner Than Too Soon
Yesterday I flew out and back to Boston. Half of my day spent in an airport or in the air, the other half as the stranger in the church, standing apart at the cemetery as I said goodbye to one of my closest childhood friends. Everyone dies too soon. Every child, of course, but Grandparents and parents are also gone too soon, even when they depart at the “usual” time. But there’s something about a friend dying, especially a friend from long, long ago.
It’s like a part of you dies, too.
My friend John was part of a nearly inseparable foursome. T, Dolph, and John became my tribe. I met Tom and Dolph right away during pre-season football practice. John sat next to me in Trigonometry; we discovered that we lived about 4 holes apart on the local golf course, a very convenient little factoid after we bonded as teammates on a very mediocre high school golf team. That summer was the first of 7 or 8 summers during which we played golf together at least 5 times each week. We got better. Maybe not good, at least not for a few years, but better than mediocre. But spend 3+ hours with someone 5+ times each week and what you really get better at is friendship.
John, Tom and Dolph were all a year ahead of me in school so they got a head start on college. Still, every school break found us right back where we’d been for our high school years. Pool and pingpong in our cellar. Tuna fish sandwiches in John’s kitchen. Earth, Wind, and Fire in Tom’s basement and Genesis in the living room at Dolph’s. I was the only one without a car (my parents didn’t let any of us have our own car) so every adventure happened in one of the cars they had. You know, I can’t ever remember catching any heat about that, even though we pretty much never found anything too trivial to NOT bust one another’s chops. Nope. Instead they taught me how to drive a stick so that I could take my turn as chauffeur.
We were all from about the middlest of middle-class families. Our parents had all come from rather modest economic backgrounds with the exception of my Dad who grew up about as poor as a city kid could grow up in the ’30’s and 40’s. But during our collective years in Rhode Island it sure seemed like we were on a level playing field. Our parents didn’t fund our fun. We all had summer jobs and what we made each summer had to carry us through the summer and the year to come. I don’t ever remember owing any of them any money, and I surely never thought about them ever owing me. Whoever had money in their pocket bought the pizza or the beer.
They were just the most comfortable friendships imaginable. I’ve had other, subsequent friendships that were just as comfortable. Just as special. Chris in high school. Rob in college and beyond. Rash and Bill in grad school. But T, Dolph, and Johnny were the friends who showed me what a real friendship was supposed to be like.
As those young years went by we all stayed close, but John and I stayed closer. John asked me to be his Best Man, and John was an Usher at our wedding (as you know if you’ve been here at all, I have a brother who is one year younger than me; all talk of best friends comes with an astaericxs: best friend after my brother). John and Deb, Beth and I spent time together as couples and as young parents. We drifted apart, as young couples will under the pressures of time and distance. And yet each “reunion” really did feel like just the most recent time among all the times we gathered.
Are you on Facebook? Do you look at your “Memories” there? 2 weeks ago would have, should have been Cape Week for the extended White Family. Talk about “sooner than too soon”, the decline and ultimately the death of our matriarch was the final straw for that extraordinary 32 year run. Mom was a bit of a tyrant. OK, not “a bit”…Mom was a tyrant when it came to what constituted a family week on the Cape. Family meant Mom and Dad, their 4 kids and their spouses, and 10 grandchildren. You know that thing where you alert all your friends within 100 miles of your beach that you’ll be there and invite them to drop in? Yeah…no. Mom barricaded her families in the Cape House and invited pretty much no one to visit.
Seriously. Her younger sister had to lobby for an invitation.
The only exception? John! John and Deb not only had an open invitation to come with or without their sons, Mom called them up each spring and tried to convince them to come for a visit. My Mom adored John, and he returned the sentiment. Pretty sure after we all turned 45 or so my Mom saw John 3 times as often as I did. At the cemetery yesterday both young John and his brother Matt had no memory of who I was and what I was to their Mom and Dad, but they remembered the year they visited the Cape House and the fuss my Mom made over the lot of them.
The last time I saw Johnny was at my Mom’s funeral. John and Deb drove to Rhode Island despite the terrible illness that would eventually take his life. John lost his Mom in high school. No one can replace your mother, but in some small way my Mom filled a tiny bit of that hole. John and Deb were there, and they stayed for the duration. The news of John’s death found me last Wednesday I think. Out and back to Boston on Saturday was never in doubt. Deb gave me the precious gift of time despite all of the friends with whom she and John had spent the recent decades.
Deb treated me as if we’d just said see you later on the morning after her wedding day.
I know what you’re thinking. Come on Darrell…get to the message already. Get to the teachable moment or just bring this story home. But you already know it, don’t you? You can never have enough friends. The friends you grew up with just might still be your best friends, even if you haven’t recently had the joy of actively sharing time and space with them. Friends like that stay friends. And friends like that don’t remember how long it’s been since you had pizza and a beer together, they just know how happy they are to be with you. Johnny and Deb, Beth and I could have done a better job of that, for sure. But still, the friendship was still very much alive. Deb let me be the last person she saw before she said goodbye to John. I cried all the way to the airport.
Teachable moment? Pick up your phone. Call the best friend you ever had as a kid. The friend who talked you off the ledge after your first breakup. The one you called when you got into the school or got the job of your dreams. That person you think of first when some amateur hack writer puts up a post about the friends we shoulda, coulda stayed in touch with. They were the first one to see the best parts of you, maybe even before you knew you had them. Distance and time often defeat even the most sincere efforts to keep warm the fires on our oldest friendships, but no one I know has ever regretted making that call. Whaddaya got to lose? If they don’t pick up the phone at least you took the shot.
I’ve got a date with T and Dolph to have a beer and toast our friend, my friend John, gone much, much too soon, taking with him a piece of who we were, and who we became.
John F. Brennan II 1959-2026. RIP Johnny. I’ve missed you. Missed you and Deb. I will miss you forever.
I’ll see you next week…
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