Sometime in 2004, I decided to try and locate an old friend from my young Chicago days. John was an Iraqi, Christian, whose father was Indian and had also held the post of sheriff of Baghdad. John was in this country on a student visa studying electronics. We met when he came to fix our TV and since the repair shop was right on our block, I saw him often and we became good friends.

I couldn’t find him on the internet, but his brother, who had an unusual first name, popped up. I wrote him and the brother told John and John phoned. Charley had hit that week and we were about to lose electricity but we managed to exchange information. In the years that followed, John, who lived in California, and I exchanged snail mail and spoke many times. He also sent me Middle Eastern pastries for Christmas. He was hospitalized several times with congestive heart failure episodes in the course of our renewed friendship.

Here is an ink drawing I did of John in 1955.



Always he managed to survive and would then call.

He had done well, his children had done well, he was widowed and carried a great sadness with him from the loss of his wife. He kept moving and each time I’d get a disconnect, I feared the worst. Then I’d call the brother again and get the new information and when I’d speak to John, I’d scold him for not letting me know.

Well he took care of that. He asked his son, Nelson, to call if anything ever happened to him, and tonight I got the call. John died this morning, having run out of time.
Nelson said he would send me the memorial card when they had one.

One of the powerful things about old friends is that you remember each other the way you were. He was 27, I was 24 when we met. In my mind’s eye, he will always be young and incredibly fit, and very talented. I know he still thought of me as looking as I did, and he also (I didn’t know) fiercely admired my feisty independent spirit, so different than the woman he knew in Iraq.

We laughed about that.

So goodbye, dear John.

xx, Teal