As we get older, an unfortunate truth is that people around us start dying; like it or not, death is a fact of life. For myself, at 51 (currently), the passing of people that I know has accelerated.
Peter Borodchuk was a friend of mine in high school in the 1970's. We had some things in common, primarily being shy and quiet; we had another friend, Steve, who was the same. We spent many lunch hours playing a "thumbs hockey game" using a coin and a table-top, similar to table-top football- Steve's specialty was the fleshy part of the finger; Peter used his finger nails (always a bit too long). He was a very warm and friendly person, but being quiet and reserved, didn't make friends easily. I don't really recall any friends other than Steve and myself, nor do I believe that he went to the grade 13 graduation dance.
Peter and I ended up at the same college in 1980, me in an engineering tech programme, and he in a bio-chem programme. We went drinking on several occasions with another friend of mine from college, Bob; Peter couldn't hold the booze as well as some, but we certainly had some fun times. One day when we were shooting the breeze, he told me that he'd like to live in a cabin in the woods; I suggested that that might be a pretty boring existence. He then said to me something that I found odd, but really defined him-- he said that he didn't mind being bored, in fact he kind of liked it.
At some point after the first year of college, we decided that at some point that we would find and share a place together close to the college-- he was living at his parent's home, and I at mine. For me, it was a definite plan, for him, it was more pie-in-the-sky. I came over to his place and told him that I had a place ready to go, at which point he became very nervous. I told him that if he wasn't ready, it was no big deal; I'd be able to find someone else. I think that we was nervous about bringing the subject up to his parents, and at the same time he may have thought that he was letting me down, and that I might be pissed at him. I wasn't.
I think that may have been the last time I talked to him at any length, as we slowly drifted apart in succeeding years at college. About 15 years later, I did a search for him on Google, and didn't find anything. Six months later, I was at a restaurant waiting for my take-out order, flipping through the paper, and see a headline "Local man missing, presumed drowned" (http://bit.ly/mXCZWq), and there's his name. I just stared at it for a while, with my hand over my mouth.
Turns out he had jumped into the spring flows in the Ottawa River to save his dog, which had fallen in. He got washed away in the current, with his poor wife watching helplessly. I went to the service, where there was a large photo of him from his wedding day. He looked happier in that photo than I had ever seen him. Funerals had been a problem for me since my father died, so I had to leave after 30 minutes or so. Anyway, it seems like he ended up with a very happy life. It also seems so unfair that something like that had to happen to such a nice person.
Not forgotten, Peter...
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