A letter to my friend Marc

It certainly was the last thing I expected this morning. I was checking my email, maybe for some feedback about a work project at most, but not for an obituary. I'm not used to reading the obits. The last person I was close to who died was my grandpa, but that was 17 years ago. Since then there has been a sense of foreboding: I knew this day would come.

It's not like we've been super close in the past few years. I moved to Princeton, and before that, in Seattle, we only saw each other once or maybe a few times in those years. But you were a soul mate, one of the few people that I felt like I knew that they enjoyed me - ME. I didn't have to hide my family or my ambitions. Yet somewhere in all of that you could still point out truths that I didn't want to hear. And not only that, we had fun together. I remember 4th of July at Ski Beach in Incline, bouncing around at a concert at Stanford while you were an undergrad and I a high school senior, and skiing together - especially skiing. Skiing was a place that I rarely had fun. I was too good to ski with my friends, and none of the people at my level were my friends. Yet I had to go because that's what my family did. But you and I shared this story, which made skiing together that much sweeter.

These were the formative experiences with you, but I also remember that I didn't think that we would be able to connect when you were in Seattle and we got together for that last time. I thought that my experience at seminary had change me too much to be able to just let down and be vulnerable with you. I only remember being sad when I dropped you off at the movie theater afterwards because the time had been so sweet.

Now, to hear of your death, it's not like it affects my day-to-day existence here in New Jersey. But I am still on the verge, holding it together while it is unraveling. Of course there was more – we shared an unrequited passion for truth, especially in knowing ourselves in the light of God (and thankfully redemption of our past shit), while remaining eminently skeptical of the way religion (or at least our non-traditional traditions) had "always" done things.

I am grateful for your ear, for your smile (both the real one and the sarcastic one), for your eyes (they often saw both what I wanted and what I did not want you to see).

I hope that as you "see" us now, you are happy with the memorial you have left – writing on hearts through relationships, reminiscent of the imagined new covenant.

A soul mate,

Peter Altmann