There Was a Heartbeat and It Never Really Died

Blog soundtrack:



Every 6-8 months, I go to http://www.boston.com/, click on “News”, click on “Obituaries”, click “by town”, enter my hometown, and then enter “past year”.
I usually look to see if a friend of my parent’s or one of my friend’s parents has passed away.
I don’t think the fact that I do this makes me particularly ghoulish or depressing in any way, at least, I think not.
I just like knowing about people and what happens to them.

My Mom read the obituaries every day.
Of course, she was a nurse; in her case, it was a bit different.
She’d sit there at the dinner table every few nights and then say, “Oh, Mr. So-and-So died. He was such a lovely man. His wife brought all the nurses pastry one day to thank us for taking such good care of him”, and then she’d heave a huge sigh.
First and foremost, she cared immensely about all the people she looked after at the Waltham Hospital, but secondarily, I guess reading the obituaries helped prepare her for who she would and wouldn’t see whenever she next returned to work.

As I scrolled down the list of names last Friday morning, no name looked familiar until my mouse came to a screeching halt at “Douglas Chase.”
I sat there and read the name over and over again.
I thought, “I know a Douglas Chase.”
No, this could definitely NOT be MY Douglas Chase, the one that I had thought about so much in the past year, wondering where he was (googling him, and coming to the conclusion that googling “Doug Chase” was like googling “John Smith” and searching the high school database), what was he doing, and how nice it would be to talk to him again.

I read on, “CHASE, Douglas 45, of Dennis and Los Angeles, CA, died January 9, 2009.”
I thought, “Okay, my Doug would have been 46 in May, but I still do not think this is him. It cannot be.”
I read further.
“Son of Leo and Eileen (Gwynn) Chase….”
I knew Doug’s Dad’s name was Leo, and it was then that I knew it was MY Doug.
I sat there shocked, stupefied, and my heart became heavy.

As Death goes, when you’re younger, if you’re lucky (“lucky” might not be the right word, but I think you know what I’m trying to say), the first death you experience is that of an elderly grandparent. There are the tragic too-soon deaths certainly. I know that first-hand, believe me.
But, when you reach my age (47), that is the time when you fully expect a friend’s parent to die or to lose one of your own parents; during this time, you certainly never ever expect to lose a friend your own age.

I met Doug when we both worked at Thayer Pharmacy, which was a small local chain of drug stores in the area.
Even though we had both been attending the same high school (he was one year behind me in my sister’s class), I had never met him.
The minute I began working with him, we became fast friends.
He was funny, intelligent, sarcastic, and adventurous.

Working with Doug (a three-hour shift from 6-9pm) was always a lot of fun; while he showed up for the job, it was always just a job to him.
He never took it too seriously, but he took it seriously enough to get his paycheck each week.
He seemed to always be of the school of thought “Let’s do what we want; who cares what they do to us later?”
I loved that about him, because at that point in my life, I was a huge rule follower.
Well, I was the middle child; I had a lot of pressure on me. :-)
Doug had no fear of opening a new Polaroid camera and having me snap pictures of him or taking pics of me.

Here is a pic I took of Doug.



Here’s a pic he took of Marcia and me.



It also seemed Doug was so looking to fit in somewhere.
And that our friendship was the “where” of his sum.
He quickly found himself absorbed by my group of friends, joining us at Friendly’s for ice cream or over at someone’s house for a party where we played Atari all night long.
Yeah, we were not a wild bunch.
Come on, we all hung out in the high school library!
We were so NOT the Jets, the Hawks, the Bloods, or the Crips; we were the charter members of the Ex Libris Gang, k?

The reason why Sara is the soundtrack for this blog is because when we got out of work at 9pm, sometimes my Mom was late.
Doug had this green sedan. I don’t remember whether it was his Dad’s or his brother’s.
And he used to sit with me in the car and wait with me, ‘til my Mom came to pick me up.
I don’t remember what the radio station was, but nine times out of ten “Sara” was always playing then.
From that day forward, whenever I heard that song, it always reminded me of sitting in that car with Doug talking about whatever was most important to us then.
Sometimes, I so wish I could go back to that.

Anyway, Doug took me to my Senior Prom as my friend.
It was a horrible time then, because my brother fell off a bridge in California about a month before my prom/graduation and almost lost his life.
My Mom was gone, and that night, only my Dad was home.
A friend of my sister’s had finished my prom gown (thank you Donna Weiss!).
And there was Doug with the green sedan wearing a white jacket with a GREEN vest to match my dress.



And here he is again.



God, the man wore GREEN for me.
Okay, so it was 1980, and everyone wore, err, colorful tuxes then.

He celebrated graduation with us.
I took this picture of him at a graduation eve party at Byron’s house.
I always loved this picture of him.



That night, we all stayed over Michelle’s house, I think.

Here’s Doug the next morning.



Here’s me, God, always with my mouth opened. Yes, I was probably talking!



After I graduated, Doug and I stayed in touch by phone.
The last time I saw him was when he called me my freshman year at Brandeis to ask me if I’d do a road trip with him to see Ithaca College.
I said, “Yes!”, which was quite wild for me given that I had to skip a whole day of classes.
He picked me up in his Mom’s wood-paneled station wagon at some ungodly hour and off we went.
A major road trip.
I remember REO Speedwagon blaring on the radio most of the time.
And I remember at one rest stop, Doug saying, “Oh, you have a zit. You might want to pop that.”
Today, I still can’t get over the fact that Doug died nine months ago, and that I missed him in a big way.

As I told one friend last year, after she lost her Mom and Dad within months, there’s no expiration date for grief.
And, you know what?
There is no expiration date for love.
A mutual friend once told me that my ex-husband told her, “There’s a part of me that will always love her.”
And, even though Doug and I hadn’t spoken for years, I realized last Friday, when I read his obituary, that there was a part of me that NEVER stopped loving him.

I’ve copied all these pictures.
I am going to write a note to his parents and send them the pictures
Most of the time writing comes so easy to me; but, I think it’ll take me at least a week to write my letter to them.

So, if you have a Doug Chase or a Donna Chase in your life, go out there and find him or her, because it’s not trite.
Life can be and is sometimes short; go out there and make every damn day count.

I will miss you, and I will ALWAYS miss having missed you, Douglas William Chase.

http://www.capecodonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20090114/OBITS/901140332/-1/ARCHIVE