It’s funny what you can run across while rummaging through family archives. Maybe funny is not the proper word. It would be more proper to call some of this stuff sad or poignant, and is a reflection of what I have been and in most cases still am.
What will follow is based on one of two different events that produced similar emotions. In the one, the death of my mother in May of 1953 caused a spiral downward of my young life that took years of effort to reverse, and even now I’m not sure I have completely been able to reverse it.
The other is the disappearance of a friend that has nagged at me like a bad itch since I last saw him in 1968. I think he is now dead, although I can’t be certain. I just punched up his name for about the umpteenth time and he is listed as having died in 2008 at the age of 68.
Again, I’m not sure of the accuracy of that report, but I am assuming it is, which means I’ll never know for sure why he left his wife and family and never again got in touch with them.
I’ll write about my mother from my brother Ron’s perspective soon. But now it’s all about my friend.
I searched for my friend, Pete, for many years before finding him in 1989 working in the school cafeteria at James Madison University in Harrisonburg, VA. I can’t remember now how I accomplished that, but I did reach him and talked not only to him but his second wife, who was separated from him at the time.
After we talked, we exchanged letters and then he cut me off for the final time. It was only two years ago I discovered why he did that. Through an obit published in the Kitsap Sun I surprisingly learned his first wife was a Bremertonian.
I had written a column in the old Bremerton Sun on my finding Pete and that, of course, unbeknown to me, set off alarm bells, and I’m sure the ex-wife served support papers on him for their only child, a son.
Pete, of course, would have known that when he learned I had written the column, and I’m sure now he got angry over that and cut me off.
Before all that happen, this is the letter he wrote me:
“Mo, where to start? It’s but a blink since we hunted ducks at Hatzel’s pond or the swamps behind Donnellan’s. The long years roll off quickly like blankets after an unrestful sleep. The larynx and the mind are out of sync as one attempts to justify or explain/understand the 218,400 hours that have elapsed since we had our last conversation.
“All the ‘old times’ instantly well up as the mind adjusts to nostalgia and the way we were. Twenty-five years, a third of a lifetime …then a 20-minute conversation with an old pal and the relentless internal dialogue turns into a scream. The old decisions that shape life and character and destiny again weight heavily on the soul.
“Mind you, I have no apologies for my actions. I have dealt with that part. I shut off my past, closed doors – built walls. Like some brooding Trappists have interrogated my meaning and purpose. To what avail? I don’t know.
“The only thing which brings me any certainty is an overwhelming demand that I always be on the move, testing new draughts, flirting with new ideas. I know some claim that mere life tasting is not enough. One must savor, settle down, be responsible, be involved. I cannot argue that point since I have never attained that kind of living.
“Too late to try?
“I don’t know.
“And the names you brought up. I looked in the mirror and said aloud those mantras of my past. ‘Mosher, Hatzel, Donnellan, Jonak, Kent, Tanguy, Moses, MA. Tears of happiness, tears of joy, tears of sorrow, tears of pain.
“I needed that kind of cleansing. The gut and dirt of 25 years could not be removed in no other way. And, yet, still I am not ready for reinstatement! Too many people would expect explanation, justification, admission.
“ (Bleep) it.
“Mosher, the sports reporter. Attaboy! You always had the eye. I hope you are satisfied in you undertakings and observations. I watched Borg at Wimbledon. Jesus!
“ I’ll write again. Tell me what you know of my family. Straight up. No Fills.”
Pete
Pete did not write again. He was gone again. Departed James Madison. Years later I discovered he was living in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware. I called that small town to see if anybody knew him.
Nothing until a few years ago I saw while looking on White Pages that he was considered deceased. Today I found a similar note, this one putting death in 2008.
So it goes.
Before Pete stopped communicating, I did write him a long letter. I ended the letter by wishing him well and that he would find his next adventure as exciting as the others (his second wife said they traveled across Canada from Vancouver Island, stopping to work here and there at menial jobs (Pete had a degree in history from Western Washington and was at one time working on his masters at Simon Fraser).
My next letter crossed in the mail with his. I summed up my life and told him about the family that he had abandon (his father had died about eight years before) and added his mother loved him and hoped he would call (I added her phone number).
Sad to say, he did not get in touch with his family. His younger brother called me one night, drunk, and threatened to beat me up if I didn’t tell him where Pete was. I referred him to his mother, who knew where he was and had his phone number. When he continued to threaten, I told him if he tried he would regret it, and then I hung up.
This is partial of what I wrote to Pete, and it’s taken out of order:
“It was a beautiful letter you wrote. I’m delighted to see that you still have that large flourish, that looping style of writing. I was always fascinated with its intensity, it’s inquisitiveness, it’s enthusiasm. ….
“It’s strange how things we do by chance sometimes drastically alter our lives. A last-second decision to go to the Wintergarden (remember that place)” turns into marriage and three kids (now five), a left turn ends up in death for a friend (of mine) because he’s at the wrong place at the wrong time. Who knows whether these things are govern by some supreme being or whether they are mere rolls of the dice?
“Is it by chance that we are who we are, or is it fated to be? At any rate, not many people get to do what you have done, come and go with the wind. I envy you for being free.”
And now, I guess, Pete is really free, blowing in the wind as Pete, Paul and Mary sang for Me and Pete one day in Vancouver when we were still students at Western and were really free to come and go as we pleased.
It’s difficult for me now to realized that was 50 years ago. But time has a way of marching us forward until we can’t march any more.
I’m still marching.
Pete’s footsteps have stopped.
See you later, Pete.
Be well pal.
Be careful out there.
Have a great day.
You are loved.