I went to see a family friend two days ago. He was someone I knew since I was very young but wouldn’t say I knew intimately; he was always there in large gatherings, when we met people in the neighborhood, and occassionally in family dinners (as my sister married into part of his family), but I knew him about as well as I knew any of my parents’ other neighborhood friends. My siblings knew him better, as they were close friends with his kids, but we had a significant enough age gap that I also only really knew them by proxy.

He was a very kind man. That was the main thing I’d describe him as: incredibly, passionately kind. He had other notable qualities, to be sure: he was strong, knowledgable, had great hair, a dominating presence that you could sense the moment he came into the room, and the heaviest libyan accent I’ve ever heard in my life, but his kind heart was the first thing anyone would mention of him. He was always available to help others if needed, he’d be sincerely interested when asking “how has your week been?” rather than just using it to start conversation, and took the effort in those little things that people don’t tend to notice but make all the difference.

About a few months back, some illness took hold of him. (Frankly speaking, I’m still not sure what it was; a tumor of somesort, I believe.) At first it seemed like he’d just need a few weeks and medication to sleep it off, but as time passed on and he became slowly weaker, we worried for what it would take for him to recover. Would he lose some mobility? Need to stay home and not overexert? Whatever it was, for such an active person (despite his age) it would be crippling.

My parents told us we should go visit him sometime, even if it was just to say hi, but I never really got around to it. I saw him a few times while waiting for a bus, and while he seemed as cheery as ever when he loudly waved hello at me, he had his chair reclined fully backwards and could barely pull up to the window. I did try to come along once or twice, but when I did they were either not home or he was asleep. “I’m sure I’ll get to do it sometime,” I thought. Two days ago, I got the opportunity.

We came to visit him in the hospital. The condition had worsened and his wife was with him for every hour of the day; by the time we arrived, he couldn’t leave the bed, and she asked me not to come in: “the last time you’ve seen him he was still himself, I don’t want you to remember him like this.” We sat outside, chatted, and while I promised her I wouldn’t go into the room, I kept shooting glances from my chair past the doorframe, and saw his legs limp and still.

We stook around, chatting a bit with her to pass the time (and hopefully lower some of the exhaustion that created surprisingly white bags under her eyes), but when we got up to go back to the car, I couldn’t quite bear leaving. “Hey, do you mind a… somewhat silly request?” I asked her. She said of course. “Could you… tell him that I said hi? I know that he- he might not respond, or even hear it, but I still- I’d like it, if you could.” She considered my request for a moment, and said that if I wanted, I could go in and tell him myself, that she wouldn’t mind. So I went in.

His skin was a surpringly healthy color, not pale as one would expect from someone who was a few weeks in a dimly lit hospital, but that’s all the well I could say of him. It was the man I knew, still was, but the way he laid in bed looked less like a sleeping patient reserving his energy, and moreso like a corpse with functional kidneys and a beating heart. I didn’t know if he could hear me, or even recognize me: “Hey, David, it’s me, Lucio. I- I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I- I just-“ my throat was clogging up, “I wanted to say hi. It’s been a while.” I could see his state, I knew what was coming next, but I couldn’t tell him goodbye without dropping into an uglier cry than the one I was only barely holding back. The closest I could get out of myself was “see you later.” I knew I wasn’t going to. I couldn’t bear admitting what I knew.

My mom called me last night from the hospital - “David passed. Tomorrow’s the funeral, so make sure you can come by.”

Today was an incredibly rainy and windy day, so much so that I was afraid that if I don’t let go of my umbrella I might accidentally give everyone else a recreation of Marry Poppins, which made me that much more surprised at the sheer volume of people who came by; we could hardly fit in the same, very large room. Seeing him covered in a Talit felt unreal - despite knowing what I was looking at, my brain kept telling me that it must be some sort of dummy, and the real him was somewhere else. I couldn’t say I knew him intimately, and yet my brain could not concieve of him not being around. My brother was one of the people who helped cover his body in the ground, and he said that he felt the same way up until the moment he saw layers of dirt overlay themselves on top of him. That made him realize that he was actually gone.

Weirdly, though, I’m somewhat glad for his family now that the funeral is over. Up until now they were in a perpetual limbo of grief, knowing what was coming but being helpless to stop it, and terrified to acknowledge it. Now, hopefully, they could start moving on. If for me this is difficult I cannot even imagine how it must be for his kids, but now they can at least begin the process. He was one of the kindest people I knew, and even when he was sick, he would try to get as much done on his own to not have to disturb the rest of his family. I’m sure the thing he’d want most is for them to not have to bear the grief of his passing for longer than necessary.

I know I couldn’t say this to you before, and I still can’t speak it aloud now, but if writing it on a computer means anything at all:

Goodbye, David. I’ll miss you.