This week a good acquaintance died, suddenly while exercising. He was 64.
When David Applefield www.applefield4congress.com/ was a student at Northeastern, when I lived down the street across from Harvard Medical. We never met, although I am sure we might have been in the same place at the same time.
When we did meet it was at a Geneva Writer's Conference. We sat in the cafeteria of Webster University where the conference was being held and talked and talked about Boston, Paris where he was living, politics and writing. He was a solid supporter of that group.
He and I had dropped from each other's radar until we hooked up on Facebook.
He was running for Congress in New Jersey. I send a message to a friend in Ocean Grove, which was in his district. I wouldn't tell her how to vote, just that he was a good guy to vote for if she were so inclined.
Then, last week my husband was sitting at the table. "David Applefield died," he said. It took a while to sink in.
For the next few days Facebook messages from other writers who knew David flowed back and forth expressing shock, regrets and memories.
We learned there was to be a memorial for him, outdoors Saturday night our Central European time in New Jersey. It would be broadcast on Zoom.
Many of the writers' group attended.
A Zoom session and a regular memorial service is very different.
Mingling is in little square boxes not face to face. There were technical difficulties that did not negate the pain shown by the speakers, those who loved him deeply.
Yet it gave us a chance to communicate across an ocean. I learned more about David's life in areas where our paths didn't cross. It sounded like the creativity of the man I had known when a speaker mentioned that as part of his campaigning, he rode his bike around his district giving out apples.
David didn't win the election. I regret he lost and I regret he didn't get a chance to serve. His type of man is needed in government and in the world.
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