Meditations on a Lost Friend

Originally appeared on WestAndClear.com on January 19, 2009.

For me, January will always be about endings as well as beginnings. On a mild, cloudless winter afternoon in Fort Worth, staring into a clear blue sky, when everything is so beautiful with a whole new year stretches out in front of us like an open road, possibilities seem endless.

Maybe not everyone would agree, but I try to wake up in the morning believing that today will always be better than yesterday. That said, I also know tomorrow is always a risky assumption. My father passed away on New Year’s Day of 2004, and I am never too far away from an existential ramble on a January afternoon.

This January, though, has been even more difficult. The Big Sleep is destined for us all, but it will ideally come after a long and well-lived life. But it is even more tragic when it comes suddenly and prematurely.

We saw that happen a few times in the past week, with Cadillac Fraf and Staff Sgt. Justin Bauer. And also for a newspaper editor in Miami, Fla., who disappeared in the dead of winter.

Pedro Abigantus, my friend and boss at the Star-Telegram, died last week at the age of 44 during surgery to rewire his pacemaker. Pedro had known for years that he would need a heart transplant, the result of a heart muscle inflammation called cardiomyopathy. However, it always seemed incomprehensible that anything could happen to him. I believed he could handle any curveball that life threw at him.

Pedro was born in Cuba, and he came to the United States as an infant after Castro came to power. Over his career, he also worked at the Chicago Sun-Times, the San Antonio Light and the Miami Herald. To say he was a boxing enthusiast would be an understatement — the man possessed an encyclopedic knowledge of the sport. I could say a lot about Pedro as a journalist and a newspaperman, but the things I will remember about Pedro have to do with the man he was, not the job he did.

If you want to find out about the kind of man he was, this blog post and the comments are a good place to start. He was a good man and a devoted husband. Part of the reason it seemed impossible that the man could have a heart condition was that he had the biggest heart of anyone I have ever known. But more than that, he was not at all bitter about suffering from a health condition that in many ways limited him. Instead, he was relentlessly positive, upbeat and determined to be involved in people’s lives.

When Pedro read in a Miami Herald story last year about a homeless family reestablish themselves, Pedro didn’t just read it, he got involved and bought beds for the kids when the family got an apartment. ”This is the way it’s supposed to be,” Abigantus said. “Neighbors helping neighbors.”

But to crib yet another line from Auden, the words of a dead man are modified in the guts of the living. We may not want to think about death, but ignoring it doesn’t serve us very well either. That point was addressed in an email from my old professor from the University of Texas, Bill Stott who regularly sends along emails about topics that interest him.

This week’s email included a link to a David Brooks‘ column about the recently deceased writer and theologian Richard John Neuhaus in which Brooks quotes Neuhaus as saying: “Be assured that I neither fear to die nor refuse to live. If it is to die, all that has been is but a slight intimation of what is to be. If it is to live, there is much I hope to do in the interim.”

Whether you believe that the Great Hereafter is merely a really, really long nap or the next step on a great journey, there is much to do in the meanwhile. Life is the business of the living, and it is business that we should get about doing right now. Like Pedro, I hope you always find the positive, choose to be involved with you neighbors and the today, and decide to make a difference. Do not to go gentle into that good night. After all, tomorrow is an uncertain proposition.

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For those who would like to remember Pedro, the family would welcome that in lieu of flowers, donations be sent to Broward Partnership for the Homeless, Inc., 920 NW 7th Avenue, Fort Lauderdale, FL 33311. Broward Partnership for the Homeless, Inc. is committed to reducing homelessness by promoting independence and self worth through advocacy, housing and comprehensive services.