A friend of my father's

by Fran Markic (Croatia)

I didn't expect to find USA

For as long as I can remember my father liked telling us stories. One of those stories was about the summer he spent in Switzerland, earning some extra money for the last year of university life. He stayed at a student residence where he met an American named Sean. The two of them didn't keep in touch and my father didn’t know anything about his current whereabouts. But I liked the stories about that man and that summer so much that before my trip to the States I decided to look him up on Facebook and contact him. I succeeded. At that time he lived in the State of New York, and immediately agreed to meet me without many additional questions. It was late July, somewhere around 7 pm, and the small upstate village he was living in seemed to me as a place where people would come to when they are done with competitive life the Big Apple has to offer. Nevertheless, my impression of that place was the one of optimism and easygoingness. I liked it straight away, and thought to myself how it fitted Sean’s character perfectly. The cafés and restaurants on the main street were full of people strolling around with their kids, pets and friends. I waited for Sean while sitting on a wooden bench, which terribly needed a coat of paint, in front of a restaurant where we were supposed to have dinner. I had seen a Facebook photo of the man I was going to meet, but the figure that was approaching me from the other side of the road was not a slightly overweight gentleman in his 50s but rather an obese, neglected man caught in some kind of a life crises. He wore grey sweatpants and a T-shirt with a hole the size of a finger. I was seized by an overwhelming feeling of awkwardness. We shook hands and exchanged a few words and then proceeded to our table. Sean was the one that did all the talking that night. He certainly did add a lot of new information and brought on a different perspective, but unfortunately not the one I had hoped to find. The atmosphere of my father’s reminiscences was the one of hope and beauty, they brought him a lot of joy, but he did not dwell on them. Maybe it has to do with the fact that for my father, present days are better days, but as for Sean, the memories of the past were those of a better time and place. Or at least that was the impression I got. The Sean I met didn’t complete the picture of the person from my father’s stories. In fact, he dismantled it. After we had finished having diner I asked him if he needed a drive home, but he said: “No, thanks. I’ll stay here for a little while longer, and think about my European days.” The next day, during my drive down the Route 9 via New York City, I couldn’t stop thinking about the yesterday’s rendez-vous, and every time I did, I got mad. I felt sorry for the man but, selfish as it is, I also didn’t like what he did to my story. That afternoon, as I was crossing the George Washington Bridge, the sun shone over Manhattan’s most iconic skyscrapers, and there was something solemn about the scene before me. By the time I got to the hotel it was already dark. Very seldom do people and things stand the test of close examination, I thought to myself before going to sleep that night. Some stories and memories ought to be left alone. Almost two years later, a photo I found on my computer reminded me of that encounter. I googled the man, once again. The first result read: “Sean E. - Obituary”. I opened the link. There it said that Sean passed away a few months before. Somewhere in the middle of the text I found out that during his university days he had started fighting clinical depression which became especially severe in his final years. My father was saddened by the information I shared with him. I was ashamed.