Losing a Friend

Winter has finally passed.  The last vestiges of snow have melted from our north-facing hillside.  This morning I rose early, made sourdough pancakes and coffee, and took service dog Elvis for a long walk into town.

I walked past the church that I once attended and served as deacon and into an older neighborhood with beautifully restored Victorian homes.  Today is garage sale weekend, so the yards and streets were busy.  The birds were singing.  I could hear children playing.  One house was silent.  The paint on the house was starting to peel.  My friend Jon was found dead in that house yesterday.

Jon grew up in that town.  He was a high school football star, graduated from college, earned a commission as a captain in the Army Rangers, and served in combat in Grenada and Panama, making dozens of jumps during his military stint at high altitude and low altitude.  Jon married a local girl, had two great sons, and worked as a stockbroker/financial adviser for many years.

I met Jon at my coffee shop and roastery.  He was widely traveled and loved coffee. Jon was a frequent participant at the “smart table” that met every morning to discuss the world and local problems of the day.  He was interested in the roasting process and would join me in the roasting room early in the morning before opening to talk and joke while I roasted.  He scared the crap out of me early one morning by putting a laser sight on my chest while he hid out in the back parking lot.  Jon did have a weird sense of humor.

I knew him as a friend in the shop and outside the shop.  One time, while I was working on a slow afternoon, he brought me a plate of freshly prepared wild game and wild rice, explaining how he harvested and prepared each of the samples on the plate.  He was a great cook, and it was delicious.  Jon also invited me to bring my kids to his home for a family fish fry–bluegill that he and his boys had caught. It was an occasion that I’ll always remember.  From the outside, everything looked completely happy and normal.

Around that time, Jon told me he would do anything for me.  I kind of laughed it off, but I think he was serious.  All i needed to do was ask. Jon was that kind of person.

I knew that Jon had back problems–partly due to parachute jumps when he was in the military.  He’d had one surgery to fuse vertebra.  Then, after saving a large, sinking man in a lake during a triathlon, Jon blew out his back again.  He needed another surgery, and Jon was never the same after that second surgery.

I went hiking with him once, taking Jon to the secret waterfall near Leland, Wisconsin.  He told me that he later took his family on that hike to show them the  waterfall. On the drive, I introduced him to the folk singer Tom Russell.  Jon seemed to really enjoy the music, especially the sad song, “”California Snow.”

Alcohol had always been part of Jon’s life, although he never let me see him intoxicated.  He introduced me to Eagle Rare bourbon by giving me a bottle although he refused to drink it with me.  I’m not sure I ever shared a drink with him.  Jon invited me to meet his parents, and his dad poured me a small glass of rye, but I don’t remember Jon having any.

As Jon’s back problems grew worse, doctors couldn’t find a way to fix him.  The two surgeries had left Jon in frequent pain, but there wasn’t a viable treatment at that point.  There was an experimental surgery, but Jon didn’t trust it.  So the doctors offered pain medication, which Jon hated.  Instead, he self-medicated with alcohol.  That was the drug he knew and trusted, but it took its toll. Jon’s wife divorced him. Jon eventually became unable to work and found himself in a fight with the private disability insurer to whom he had paid premiums for decades.

During the last couple of years, there was a gap between what Jon told me and what I believed to be true.  He was keeping up a front about what was happening in the divorce case and the disability insurance case and about how he was dealing with the pain.  Jon stopped inviting me into his house or even answering the door.  He didn’t have voice mail set up and refused to text.  He would sometimes call me up on the phone when it was clear that he was intoxicated.  More often, he would show up at my house completely sober and in obvious pain.  Jon would mention that alcohol had been a problem but one that he had overcome.

Last Thanksgiving, another friend called to tell me that Jon was in the hospital and might not make it.  The doctors were giving him a 4% chance of survival and admitted him for hospice care.  His skin was a deep yellow.  Both his liver and kidneys were failing.  Jon was a fighter and beat the odds.  He eventually transferred to a local nursing home and then miraculously back home to live independently.  Jon knew that drinking again would kill him.  We talked about it–at least three times in the last couple of months.  He told me that he had found spirituality and was committed to spending his remaining days wisely.

About a month ago, Jon came by my house to visit while another mutual friend was here. We shot the crap about old times.  His color was much better–nearly normal. We drank coffee and told Jon how glad we were that he had made it back.  Jon was going to get a puppy.  Things were looking up.  A few days later, I stopped by at Jon’s house, and he wouldn’t answer the locked door.  I drove back home, and the telephone rang.  It was Jon, and he was off.  I didn’t know if it was pain medication or alcohol, but my heart sank.  I couldn’t be totally positive what was going on, so I didn’t say anything directly to him during the phone call. Maybe I should have.

Two weeks ago, Jon called and said he was feeling down.  I invited him to come over while I moved firewood into the pole shed.  Jon asked if he could bring soup from the Chinese restaurant in town.  Jon also brought his new puppy, and we sat on the hill in the sunshine, eating our soup and watching the puppy play in the grass. I never did get a good photo of it; the puppy was in constant motion.


 We talked about better days:  the hike to the hidden waterfall, dogs, coffee.  He was sober, but I could tell he wasn’t feeling great.  Jon didn’t eat much of his soup.

 A few days later, Jon called to talk, and I invited him to come over for coffee. It was a miserable cool and wet day.  He complained about feeling cold and wondered if I would build a fire.  I threw on some fresh wood into the wood stove, and he sat by the fire in the rocking chair, warming his bones and drinking the coffee.  Jon said it was the best coffee that he’d ever had.  He usually said that to me.

Jon called me up on the next day to say how much he enjoyed the coffee and the fire.  That would be the last time I talked to Jon.

As I suspected, Jon went back to drinking to ease the pain.  When I heard the news of his death yesterday, I was angry and sad–mostly angry.  Today, I have the same emotions, but I am mostly sad.  The family decided not to have a funeral.  The world has lost a good guy.