death and a terrible faux pas

I will tell you something private and horrible.

A dear long term friend of mine died yesterday.

Right before I made a terrible mistake.

And now I must live with what happens.

Joseph is the oldest man that I know. I've known him since I was twenty-one and he was old then.

It was a very big party. At a very big house. A mansion, in fact. That took up nearly the whole block.

In a black neighborhood.

The biggest house around. The whole thing incongruent.

Almost everything else around it were regular small houses. And around those a fairly decrepit neighborhood. I don't know if the neighborhood was on the way out or on the way to being gentrified. Whichever it was Joe living here was an anomaly. He did not fit there.

On Forest Street. We called the place Forest Hills.

Almost everyone at the party was white. They were all preppy types. They drove German cars. Joseph was looked up to as model. He was a vice president of a carpet company. He did a lot of business. He helped a lot of people with their careers. A lot of people owed Joseph their livelihood.

That night I was meeting these people for the first time. I was taken there by woman I was dating at the time. I was speaking to a man and woman at the front door in an elegant marble foyer. I was idly gazing out the window set in the front door to the front porch with the light on outside and inside ...

When a face suddenly appeared. Scared the living shit out of me.

Totally spooked.

A neighbor was curious about what was going on inside. So he came up on the porch and looked.

Is that f'k'n weird, or what?

I was outside of all that social activity. I do not know why Joseph took up to me. For some reason that I do not understand he really liked me. His wife told me so.

He might have liked me because I never asked him for a job. When everyone else like me does.

He asked me to help him with a lot of projects. Things that have nothing to do with my own work. Build a grape arbor, set patio stones, cook a gigantic salmon, for examples. He invited me to places and to things where I had no other business. He wanted me to be in his circle of friends. He introduced me to the people he knows. Which was odd because frankly I was different from everyone else.

And tonight I have those people calling me and telling me how much Joe adored me.

"Bobby, I hope you understand how much Joe loved you."

I've heard this tonight repeatedly. From California, Arizona and Colorado.

I have no idea why.

All that I know is we had very good times together and mostly through things that he put together.

He had a condominium in Breckenridge and I cooked a few dinners there and went there to ski. My friends and I did that in several other places too. That wasn't particularly special.

Tonight one woman was sobbing. She was telling me about Joe's fondness for me and she could not keep herself together. I don't know why she tried talking when she couldn't form words but for her it was important that she tell me that Joseph really liked me.

Joseph moved from a different home in Denver to Oakland California. He asked me to help drive his stuff out there.

He rented three large U-Haul vans and three of us drove them to Oakland. We loaded and unloaded the trucks. I didn't see anything particularly strange about Oakland. Everything seemed normal to me.

I used my vacation time to do this, and that's one of the things that people still talk about. Why he asked me to help, I haven't a clue. We were treated very well through the whole effort. It really was a lot of work. Joe had tons of crap.

Literally tons.

Of crap.

I recall elegant lunches and dinners in maritime-themed restaurants. Putting things together in his new house really was quite a lot of very hard work. He showed us around Oakland.

Back home I mentioned to another friend, odd being so close to San Francisco but not bothering crossing the bay.

I meant nothing to it. It was just odd. That's all. That person then mentioned what I said back to Joe who never forgave himself for the oversight. I didn't really care, but for the next decades Joe kept trying to make it up.

He moved again to Phoenix. He's been bugging the living shit out of me to come down and visit, but I don't want to go just to see a house. I don't want to fly down just for that. Meanwhile other friends are flying back and forth all the time. But not me. I'm just different from the rest of his friends.

I go, "Look, Joe, I just don't feel like flying around anymore. I had my fill. Overfill. It's not fun anymore." If we'd fly our own airplanes that's different. That's worth the trouble. But not commercially. That whole thing is taken over by freaks. The pilots we used to do this with drink too much. Flying around means they cannot drink and that takes all the fun out for them. So that activity phased out. I would drive. Does Joe care to drive too? No. Too far to drive.

So uckitfay. Take pictures of your house.

He was having trouble. His shoulder was acting up. He had surgery on his shoulder and his recovery was taking too long. One thing after another prevented him from visiting Denver as usual. So I haven't seen Joseph in a few years. And all of that is fine.

Last week I asked him how he is doing. He sent back this photo.

Jesus Christ. 

He looks like hell.

I did not respond immediately. I must ask, okay, what's with the eye?

He had cataract surgery. But he didn't mention that in his email.

After a few days I wrote him yesterday, a very rude email that made light of his eye. 

I go, what happened to you? Did you get into another fight?

You know what this means. 

It means no depth perception. That's what it means. Then I listed ridiculous things that happen when you have no depth perception. Things that would definitely NOT be his concern. His eye is his concern, not his depth perception. 

* You go for the doorknob and bash your hand on the door.

* You drop your glass on the floor instead of on the counter.

* You say goodbye to medaling in Olympic archery.

* Same thing with lawn darts and horseshoes. 

* Just crossing the street becomes a real hazard.

* No more hatchet throwing for you.

* You have new problems parking your car.

* Threading a needle becomes an impossibility.

All things that he wouldn't be doing. These are not his concerns. 

See? This is what happens when you keep getting into fights. You could put an eye out!

But Joseph never saw my email. He was already dead.

And now other people that I know are his executors and co-executors. Other people are going through his things, his records, his mail, his computers and his laptops. His accounts. His email. 

And I guarantee, I will never hear the end of this. That's no way to speak to some one who's hurt. But I do anyway. Because look at me. I'm a worse mess than that. Suffer already and have some macabre fun dealing with the condition. But now he is dead and there is nothing fun about that.