Dear John

It was not unusual to find him playing Pong at deadline. He drove his editors nuts. His copy wasn’t merely late. It was Ray Charles in a mood. You never knew when it was going to show up, but when it did, it was good.

The second time I met him, he saw me first. I was piling out of a cab on 17th in a skirt cut up to my frame of reference. There were probably 10 guys smoking in front of the building. It was New York. I walked by ignoring them when all of a sudden he jumped out to hold the door for me. I’m pretty sure I was flabbergasted.

When he finally settled on someone to hire, he brought them into the editors like a dog with a Frisbee. “Hey, look what I got.” That’s how it was with me, a former farm wife with a relatively new journalism degree, short on savvy, long on determination. For him, it wasn’t about finding the most qualified person. It was about finding someone he could stand for 10 or more hours a day, and who would run interference with the editors.

“He’s on his way.”

“He’s having breakfast with the guys from Bear Stearns.”

“I’m sure he e-mailed that story. Hang on a sec’. Let me look …”

“Picture of what? Oh, yeah. He asked me to get that. I forgot.”

“He’s in the men’s room.”

“He’s at the dentist.”

“He stepped outside.”

“He had an interview.”

I never said, “he’s at the gym,” but I wish I could have. John was an overweight, hyperactive pack-a-day smoker before he finally quit. A six-year-old could have done the math. We all knew. I used to crack wise about knowing CPR. But I wasn’t around when it happened, and I’m sure it wouldn’t have mattered. If they couldn’t save him in a hospital emergency room, I doubt Red Cross CPR training would have averted this day; his loved ones gathered in a church to say good-bye.

Even if everything about him portended the outcome, there was no way to be ready for the news. It spread among those who knew him a lot and a little like an electric current. Voices cracked and choked. Doors closed and tears fell. At 45, he was gone.

Posted on the magazine’s Web site where his copy would have been were the remembrances of those who knew him. He wore black, white and blue. Exclusively. He was obsessed with music. And eyeballs. He liked Magritte. He was at times foul-mouthed but always an unfailing gentlemen. He was completely moral but never judgmental. He was generous, thoughtful, hilarious, cogent.

He knew himself and let others know him, which is rare. Most of us are less well-defined, or guarded and secretive in some way. We have personas. One for work. One for home. One for that God-awful dinner party, and yet another for God. Labyrinthine walls separate us from the world; leave us lonely. We become trapped within our fear of being judged, rejected or not noticed at all.

Anyone who rejected John was not worth knowing.

I knew him once in a piece of time that passed a few years back; years that changed me, cleaved me open. I spend a lot of time these days just breathing. I would not fit well in the circle of clever and dynamic people close to him, but knowing that it still thrived with him at the center was enough.

I wasn’t quite aware of that until today, as they gather in a church to say good-bye.

Saturday, November 25, 2006

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.