Three mini-eulogies, and a Pepsi
My friend Bob died this week, and I’ve been struggling to name the feeling that has been bubbling up inside me since I got the news. There are the usual suspects: grief, sadness, a bit of denial. But there’s something else that’s been rising like a ball of dough in my gut, not just this week, but for the past few years, ever since the first time I lost a friend.
The feeling is this: the ache of knowing that there are people and situations and conversations I will never be able to revisit, that lives I’ve lived are now over, really over, because the people who made them real are gone. The world-shrinking pain of realizing that there are histories of which I am now the only keeper, private, untranslatable worlds that live only in me. The slow process of becoming more and more alone in the world, as your past is swallowed up by The Nothing, like the world in The Neverending Story. Is there a German word for that?
Bob managed volunteers at TIFF for a long time, and he was great at his job, empathetic, caring, truly interested in people, and well liked by everyone. We met at a TIFF party, a random encounter that turned into a conversation, that turned into a date. He was funny and easy to talk to, and I was never a TIFF volunteer, so there was no conflict of interest when he asked me out. I said yes, because he was warm and charismatic and weird in the best possible way. He cared so deeply about his work, about art, about community. He was inspiring.
His friends thought I was a terrible match for him (they were right), and I was just coming out of a very long term relationship, so the romance didn’t last long, but we stayed friends for the next 20-ish years. When I was going through a bad breakup, he offered me his apartment while he was abroad for work. I took care of his cat and his home for three months, and his generosity allowed me to get back on my feet much more quickly than I’d have done on my own.
Bob lost his mom earlier this fall, and I wanted to send him a message, to check in about how he was feeling, and welcome him to the terrible club of the mom-less. But life was hectic, I was stressed about money and crushed under a few deadlines, so I never reached out.
I need a word for this, too. The regret of not having connected with someone before abruptly, unexpectedly losing them. Of not listening to a gut feeling, and realizing too late that the opportunity you let slip through your fingers was your last.
In 2012, I accompanied Colin to Cannes for his then-annual trip to the film festival on behalf of TIFF, and we extended our trip so that we could spend a few days in Paris. I had a friend living in Paris at that time. His name was Adam, he was a musicology professor I’d met at an academic conference a decade earlier. Adam was abrasive, swore a lot, often said inappropriate things, and had a sharp mind and quick sense of humour. It’s a set of characteristics that describes many of my favourite people. I liked him immediately.
Adam used to write me emails about his relationship troubles, and I loved them, because they were funny, and self-deprecating, and respectful to his partners. If someone had to be the butt of a joke or the punchline of an anecdote, it was always him, never the women.
In May of 2012, I told Adam I was coming to Paris and we made loose plans to get together. Colin and I had just gotten married, and I wanted to introduce him to my new husband! And then, my Paris itinerary got crowded, and we didn’t finalize our plans, and I thought … oh well, there will be other chances. I might come back to France. He was Canadian, and would have to visit home at some point.
Four months later, I got a message from a mutual friend that Adam had died. We weren’t the most intimate friends, but I still think about him often. I even miss his absurd romantic dramas.
In 2022, while I was watching a movie with Colin and the kiddo, my dad came into the room to pull me aside and tell me that my cousin Andreja had just died of an apparent overdose. He and I were only six months apart in age, and grew up like siblings (we don’t have a word for “cousin” in Serbian, anyway). He was incredibly smart and sensitive and also a daredevil, brave and reckless in equal measure. After his dad (my dad’s brother, my favourite uncle) died when we were just 14, Andreja struggled a lot. We lost him to drugs for a long time, but he clawed his way back, found love, had two beautiful kids, and seemed to be thriving.
Then, the pandemic happened, and for all kinds of reasons, it wrecked him, as it did so many people. By 2022, he was hard to pin down. He was separated from his wife and we couldn’t get him to answer our emails, even when it was about a family inheritance that he was supposed to get a portion of.
My gut screamed “call him to tell him you love him and insist that he come over for dinner, or to stay.” I knew he couldn’t stay with us, because he worked outside the city and didn’t have a car. But still.
I didn’t end up calling, because my dad was already trying to make plans with him, and I figured I’d see him when they sorted it out. A couple of weeks later, he was gone.
A story that is dark, but makes me laugh:
Andreja was a lifelong Pepsi drinker. Like many in the Eastern bloc, he hated Coke. Was this because Coca Cola symbolized everything we disdained about America more than Pepsi did? I don’t know, but Coke could get stuffed, as far as he was concerned.
When I arrived at his open-casket funeral, he was lying there, looking like a wax mannequin version of himself, wearing a bright red Coca Cola hoodie. His family remembered that he loved cola, and his younger kid found the sweatshirt for him to wear. Nobody remembered his pop brand loyalty, and why would they? I was the only person who knew, the last keeper of this piece of historical knowledge.
Only Andreja could have understood how funny it was that he was being inadvertently punked in this way, at his own funeral. A Coke hoodie! He would have found it hilarious, but he couldn’t laugh about it with me, because he was the one in the coffin. I stood in front of him for a long time, laughing and crying. I can picture the exact mock-exasperation with which he’d have rolled his eyes.
I hope I learn how to listen to my gut when it tells me to connect with people. It’s never the wrong thing to do, even when they don’t die.
I also hope that someone organizes a Toronto memorial for Bob. I couldn’t talk to him one last time, but I’d love to spend an evening talking about him with other people who knew how special he was.
I feel these feelings too ❤️ Life is edged in these ways- but only because it was also full of love before. Thanks for writing this