Nostalgia leads to sad

[fbhjr]

Two of the folks who sit near me at work were having a “discussion” over
which of their families put on a better spread of food for the holidays.
One is from Greece. The other from Syria. Both tell me they have a big
tradition of making sure everyone has plenty of food for the holidays.
Both seem to feel their culture has a better tradition of providing holiday
food.

“What about you?” the guy from Syria asked me.
“I’m out of the running,” I said. “My mother wasn’t a very good cook and
wasn’t very good about sharing it with people.”
“Irish?” he asked me.
“Half Irish,” I agreed.
“Stingy with food!” he said. “But, a great place to get a drink!”
“We had no shortage of alcohol when I was growing up,” I agreed.
“So, where did you go to eat?” he asked me.
“What?”
“Everyone I know from your background had a friend who had a family that
could cook! You must have had some friend whose house you liked to go to
eat.”
“I did,” I said, thinking back. “When I was in grade school I had a friend
Peter. His mother was a great cook. She’d spend weeks getting ready for a
big holiday. It was always fantastic food.
“I heard Peter went on to be a chef himself. I’m not surprised.”
“Not Irish people?”
“No, they were Italian.”
“See! There you go!”

I hadn’t thought about Peter in a long time. We had been friends from 4th
to 6th grade, then we went off to different schools and never saw each
other again. 6th grade was now more than 40 years ago for me…

Thinking about that, I plugged his name into Google.
I found that he died 8 years ago.

That was unexpected.
He had only been 44 at the time.

We were friends for 3 years. I haven’t seen him in more than 40.
But, it still makes me quite sad.

Comments

[chaquir.livejournal.com]

Oh no, I'm sorry.

It would've been nice to be able to re-connect.