Remembering My Friend John

John, 1971, Southold, New York

It’s never too late to divulge a memory. We should do it more often. Especially a memory of someone we have lost. We all have such different experiences; it can be so comforting to hear what others felt about a loved one. And what they shared.

I think about my friend John often. He was one of my earliest and dearest friends. This photo is from 1971 and I remember him from years before that. This picture always stops me as it captures just how complex a person he was. He was caring. He was troubled. John had dark brown eyes that at one moment would radiate life and the next reveal a gripping void. I saw how gentle he was with animals. He loved the beach and the stars and the moon. He sat alone on the giant sand heap near the canal a lot.

What people teach us at a young age is so important.

We had a wooden raft that our parents used to anchor up out in the bay for the summer. We'd swim out to it and dive off it all day long. We'd sit on it and laugh and talk and push each other off. John and David, my two buddies, would dive under it and swim the length of it underwater. It was about 10 feet wide and long, couldn't have been much bigger, and they would both emerge out of the other side while I sat on top of it. They were triumphant, popping up like happy dolphins. I was in awe that they would risk what I perceived as imminent danger.

I was deathly afraid of swimming under the raft as I imagined that it would suck me up half way through and I’d run out of air pockets, gasp my last breath and then drown, stuck to the slimy bottom like a barnacle. Over-imaginative, dramatic to be sure. And, needless to say, my two buddies thought I was a big, whiney baby. 

So, one day, at their urging and taunting, I took the dare. I was in a two-piece bathing suit - red, white and blue. I looked like a flagpole. I was petrified, shivering, and blue with fear. All 95 pounds of me. Skinny legs. Flat chest. Pseudo nerves of steel. I took a big breath, plunged down and started to swim under the raft. 

Half way through, I panicked. 

I cut to the side and came out at the half way mark, gasping for air, spitting out salty water. When I could finally focus, I couldn't believe what I saw. The two of them huffing and puffing, pushing the raft. My immediate reaction was that they were pushing it away from where I started as to make my trip longer. Again, I panicked. I swam as fast as I could to shore and ran into my house, into my room, a crying mess. They hated me. They were trying to kill me.

Not long after, John came to my house and my mother told him I didn't want to see him. So he left. I watched from behind a curtain upstairs in my parent's room. He had on his usual droopy olive green t-shirt and denim cut-off shorts. He had wide, bony shoulders and as he walked away, barefooted, his head hung down and his brown curly hair bounced. He looked sad. 

That evening, around sunset, he came over and threw stones at my window, which was at the back of the house. I snapped up the window shade and peered down. He looked up, and sang. Actually sang.

"Dear Prudence, won't you come to play?" 

I was at that teenage crush age. If any boy looked past my freckles and stick body and stringy red hair, he was my next crush. But this was John and he was my best friend, and he sang to me. I went downstairs and out the back door.

We walked down the rocky driveway to the beach and sat on a little knob of grass in front of our neighbor’s house. He explained that what they were doing was actually pushing the raft towards my entry point so my underwater swimming jaunt would be shorter. They knew how scared I was. They were trying to help me make it to the other side. 

I'll never forget that. 

It taught me volumes about trust. I think about that day sometimes when I get scared. I remember that they cared enough to want to help me. I remember that things are not always as they seem. So I keep swimming.

And there isn't one, single, solitary time when I hear the Beatles sing "Dear Prudence" that I don't think about John. 

The impact people have on each other can be life changing, unbeknownst to anyone, especially the recipient. Until it hits you. I miss him and I wish I had gotten to know him as a grown up. I never got the chance, as he died a short few years after that day.