Losing people

John D, my old mentor, friend of my youth, prof of my first academic foray, died today. Very suddenly, of apparently undiagnosed liver disease.

Our connection was written first over tiny 80 cent glasses of draft, lunches at the DH where I reveled in the sound of my own voice, self-important at being lunched like this, thrilling at the poking at the edges of what this connection could be. A vision of him singing to me with Elvis on the sound system, I Can't Help. Then laughing in his slightly snarky way. He made me believe I was worth attention, buffered my rumpled self through my coming out into adulthood, queerness, love.

We roamed together after I moved to Toronto on reams and reams of paper. In my first real job, when computers and fancy paper were a novelty, I'd write lengthy letters, then print them on art samples, cerlox them, emboss them, showing off the post-gutenberg tools of my urban life. I'd send him unimaginably dull documents I'd produced, research into insurance fraud or media backgrounders on battery recycling. He once commented that he was impressed that my work was at least "involving," a phrase that stuck with me.

He loved me hard, in his odd little sarcastic tweaking way. Then, I lost the plot with him a bit when I made the shift to finger-tip fast email, reserving post for packages, cards, Special Things. But we'd connect over the blips, poetry fragmenting into my mailbox, catch up snippets of our narratives. He went on cruises with Sue, conferenced with his Steinbeck compatriots, wrote his music reviews, worried about his daughter, became a grandfather. I was happy I made the effort to go to his retirement party a couple of years ago, my presence part of the surprise that he seemed to appreciate.

Last summer, when I wrote to him and told him about the end of my marriage, he sent me an incredibly loving letter, assuring me he was enfolding me hard and tight. It mattered.

I'm sad and shocked. Beth and I never made that dinner party happen, never quite sure how to bring the two decade old history into our current lives, loving him in a sort of rueful, "does he just sit and drink and listen to music all the livelong day?" kind of way. We knew he didn't, really, but his Slavic romantic brooding was always foregrounded in the space between us.

I can't find my copy of the poem he wrote for me. But this one he wrote for Friend and Lover will do.

Pupil

Another one has entered in
by eyes, and dwells inside;

another "student," come to teach
herself to me. Another talk

that leaves me feeling touched
as though the talking keyed

an arch that had been building
-- leaning pillars, unawares --

through many careful years.
Although I stand before them

naked as a model daily, when
one in hundreds proves to know

my inness like a lover's body --
blush! Another thing like love!