A Wonderful Friend.

   The friend of my geriatric years, John Dell, shuffled off his mortal coil last night. It was not a surprise, though it's always a surprise when someone you care about no longer exists. We were very close friends and I was honored when his son included me with the immediate family in what in Ireland we would have called a Wake. It was an informal, heartfelt gathering, that was more the celebration of a creative well-spent life, than a mourning. As was appropriate to this man who loved music, 'Johnny' as I always called him (I never found out whether he liked that appellation or not, that's what I always called him and he never complained) went to meet his maker surrounded by music and by those who loved him. I was one of those people.
   Johnny and I had discussed our long-term outlook. He was a God -fearing man and I an agnostic. Johnny used to kid me.
   "If I'm wrong, I'll never know it. If you are, you're going to have a lot to answer for!! But I'll do what I can for you." he laughed.
   We first became friends in 2004, soon after my coronary by-pass surgery, when I started frequenting the Aquatic Centre to develop an exercise program as advised by my physicians. Johnny and I, both of us talkers, struck up a friendship almost immediately and when he suggested coffee at the next door Tim Hortons, it was the beginning of a long culinary relationship as well as a unique friendship. There weren't many eateries within a reasonable distance that Johnny and I hadn't tried and given some (pardon the pun!) feedback. For a while we actually kept a notebook commenting on the quality of the eats. When a waitress once asked us about it, Johnny had no difficulty in assuring her we were developing a food column to be published as soon as we could find a paper interested. We even convinced ourselves that it might come about! Soon it became a regular date and two or three times a week we went swimming and scoured the local eating establishments that were a little different.
   We always celebrated the beginning of summer by taking a drive in his old seventies convertible, a Chrysler New Yorker I think, to  Port Stanley, where we sat on the patio of an old lakefront hotel, now gone and ordered a large plate of fresh perch and a jug of beer.  We would overlook the drawbridge going up and down every half hour or so.  John loved that car and when two 'girls' (at least in  their seventies) came over to our table and commented, "nice car you boys are driving!" John glowed with pleasure.  On our way home we always stopped at Shaw's Ice Cream for a spectacular ice cream cone.  It was the first place that I ever tasted a 'Cinnamon Bun' Ice Cream cone!  I loved it- and like so  many of the things I loved, it isn't available anymore. 
   
   He had some amazing stories to tell of an era when men were men and women were women. He was WW2 come alive. He joined the Canadian Navy when he was sixteen, below the age when it was permissible to serve in the armed services. When he was found out, he was transferred to the Norwegian Merchant Navy, where his adventures extended from being locked in the Freezer of a food conveying ship, to falling overboard.
"That must have been terrifying, John," I had said to him.
"Yes, I thought I was finished and I could imagine what my mother would say! I was lucky, because the ship was anchored. Otherwise I would have been a dead man!"
   He had been a cop in Niagara Falls for a number of years and had a rich cornucopia of stories. A big man, both literally and metaphorically, I wouldn't have like to be on the wrong side, when Johnny gave the bad guys the "eye".
   I managed to match his stories much of the time, regaling him with tales of my years in Regina, as physician to and a Special Constable in the RCMP.
   He and I particularly enjoyed the summers, when we took over my son's swimming pool and lolled around the pool before checking out the restaurants in Lambeth.
   In the past year, he wasn't able to swim and so we played a different sort of pool - eightball!   He complained about being almost blind in one eye, particularly when he missed a shot. When he played a difficult shot brilliantly, as he sometimes did,he would say,
   "Not bad for a blind man, Eh??"
   A wonderful friend to have made in this stage of both of our lives. I will miss him sorely.