Godspeed, my friend
Usually, your friends start to pass away when you’re in your 70’s or 80s. But when you and your friends have disabilities, and some of them are pretty serious, the loss just goes with the territory. I’ve been losing friends since I was in high school.
At the very end of a very rough weekend, I learned that I’d lost one of my best friends. My very first friend from college in fact, Gerry Zimmerman. His family owned a dairy farm near Coulterville. He used a power wheelchair with a headrest that towered over him. He was smart and funny, sometimes sarcastic, and wrote outrageous short stories.
Gerry would say that the first time we met I asked him about my new roommate. I was a new freshman at SIU in Carbondale, and outside of my dorm room was a very large crate with my roommate’s name on it. I don't remember what Gerry told me, but I found a friend and a brother that day. I was away from home for the first time in my life. Exciting, yes, but also very scary - would I be able to do this? Gerry and his roommate/PA Tom lived on the other side of the accessible bathroom.
I think that year he really opened up and started exploring, and he took me along with him. He showed me how to get to McDonald's off campus, and the bookstore, and movie theater, and even more importantly he showed me how to get back to the dorm. He took me to see the Talking Heads when they played the small auditorium on campus because they were new, and after muddy Waters we would make up our own blues songs. If one of us said anything about being frustrated or something being difficult the other one would immediately chime in with blues chords. That never got old.
Because I went to a special high school, and all of my friends lived farther away, there was no socializing after school except by phone. In college I used a scooter, and the power wheelchair, and it meant that I could come and go as I pleased. With that freedom came a community, people with disabilities who were also very active academically, socially, and athletically. Gerry introduced me to what we affectionately called “Rec for Spec Pops,” bowling every Thursday night.
He was the perfect example of a limitless spirit in a limited body. There was almost nothing he wasn’t curious about.
It was so long ago that there was no internet and we didn’t even have a television in our room though eventually there was one in the dorm. But when we were bored one of us would say let’s make a tape. We recorded hours of mock interview shows. I played the straight man, trying to get reasonable responses out of whatever strange character he would come up with. Many times we’d have to stop so that I could finish laughing. (Me: Good afternoon, Mr Stupid. Gerry: Don’t call me that! Oh, wait. That’s me!) I hope someday that I'd be able to transfer the audio to digital but those tapes are 40 years old. Amazing to think that I’ve known him for 2/3 of my life.
He loved learning the “first” of things and I’ll never forget the glee with which he told me that the first practical flush toilet had been designed by Thomas Crapper. I made him take me to the library and show me that one.
A friend of ours had a roommate who was a computer science major. This of course led us to hours in the computer center, playing early text-based games like NIM. Gerry once acquired the printout of the complete rules to Star Trek. The inches-thick stack of dot-matrix paper was a testament to his detailed mind.
Sometimes, if we were in town or even at the mall waiting for a ride, someone would give us a little bit of money, a dollar or two. At first I was offended, thinking that someone felt sorry for me or thought I was poor. Gerry explained that the offer was made in genuine compassion and that they felt good to help out. He attended Mass every Sunday. I always gave him whatever money a stranger had given me for the poor box and he would always say as he left, “I’ll put in a good word for you.”
Along with our friend Kent Eicher – who Gerry introduced me to -- we were like the Three Musketeers. When I was a senior, and Gerry hadn’t yet come back to grad school, Kent and I would pick up food from the munchie truck and go back to his room and make fun of Dallas. When Kent was a senior and Gerry and I were in grad school they would come over to my trailer every Friday night and I’d make a pizza and we would watch bad movies on my brand-new HBO. Kent passed away years ago after complications from diabetes.
He was a friend and a brother and he and his family meant quite a bit to me in a time when everything was new and a little bit scary. I think I will miss him more than I can imagine. I am certain of two things: that he is finally limitless, and that I will see him again. Be at peace, my friend.