Losing Jonathan by Linda Waxler & Waxler Robert

Author:Linda Waxler & Waxler, Robert [Linda Waxler]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Spinner Publications
Published: 2010-04-26T16:00:00+00:00

Talking to the Roommate

I spoke to Steve Johnson a couple of times that day. He had trouble talking through his own pain and tears. “Jonathan was a wonderful guy, warm and compassionate,” he said. Yes, a mensch, I thought.

Early that night Jonathan had gone into his bedroom, Steve told me, the bedroom with posters of Chavez and Garcia on the wall. “After a while, I asked him how he was doing,” Steve said. “I’m doing all right,” Jonathan apparently replied. “Had a couple of beers, that’s all.”

“He even mentioned he owed you a call.”

Steve regretted going out that night, he began to explain to me. And then it emerged—the ultimate irony, compassionate and cruel in its implications.

“There was another guy living with us in the house,” Steve began, his voice stumbling as he talked. “Jonathan had been the one who convinced me…to let this guy live with us…just for a short time. We knew him from the Ohloff House.…That’s the way Jonathan always was. He wanted to help everyone.…If he hadn’t been living with us.…I’m sorry, I have to hang up right now.”

Yes, perhaps—perhaps then—oh yes, if it had only been different, if it had only been otherwise.

Steve didn’t know Jonathan would die that night, of course. If he had, he would have stayed there with him, I am sure. I wish he had.

“If a person is near death, it is forbidden to leave him, so he should not die alone,” the Shulchan Aruch tells us.

The next day, when I called him again, Steve was still troubled, but straightforward. Jonathan had been taking drugs for the last two weeks. On Wednesday he had been particularly bad. Steve knew who had sold the drugs to Jonathan: Pete, who had targeted Jonathan as an addict. Steve knew where Pete was. He was going after him to get him once and for all.

I wondered if this was why Jonathan had wanted to leave the neighborhood, move to Berkeley, begin to hang out with a new group of friends. I wondered if we should go after Pete, have him arrested, thrown in jail for murder.

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