I have a friend named Sammy.  Mickey really.  Well, I had a friend named Sammy-Mickey.  Sometimes I think that we all have had or might have had. 

“I chose the name Samujule when I was born” he once told me.  “But when my parents saw me they changed it to Michael and then Mickey no matter how hard I protested.  But that was because it was January.  If it had been October it should have been Bartholomew.”

“But you were born in June” I responded after a brief pause.

“Exactly” was what he said before he said no more. 

Now he always told me to call him Sammy so I did.  But when his parents were nearby, back when we were kids together a long time ago, I was told by them to call him Mickey.  Only once did he insist that I call him Bart and that was right before he went away to the special school in upper Michigan.  I forgot the name of the school but it was for his own benefit according to his parents.  It was early October.

I didn’t see Sammy-Mickey-Bart again much over the following years.  Not until he had returned from being away for almost seven years.  He didn’t seem to me all that different but his parents kept saying, before they died later on at least, how much better he was.

Sammy was always scared of things; many things.  Nine-legged spiders; green cars; low-flying planes; girls with braces who looked at him; morning light but just the rays that somehow managed to reflect and come back at him and him only from the west (just isn’t natural he would often say); successful failures; dogs with short tails; hammer heads; orange smoke; footprints in the snow; clocks that ran fast; unplugged television sets; and many, many more.  His list was long and his fears real.

I never really understood why so many people thought Sammy so strange.  Well, maybe I did sometimes.  I knew him for what seemed forever and while I would not say he was my best friend he was still a good friend.  He would often listen to me for hours and then only sometimes ask the most innocent of questions.  He never expected much from me other than to not yell at him or hurt him in any way.  As if I ever would or ever could.

“I’ll need you there at the end of all this” he told me on more than one occasion but I didn’t ask. 

Sammy was also always afraid of running out of things.  He was very scared that he would run out of excuses or options but he also feared running out of money, ink for his pen, lead for his mechanical pencil, toilet paper of course, pills for his head pain, space for his eraser collection, water for his favorite plant, and far too many other things to list.   His list was very long and his fears were very real.  To him.

His parents died when he was still relatively young but they left the small, neat house and a sizable trust fund to Mickey-Sammy and appointed me trustee.  I did the best I could to make his life comfortable and I visited as often as I could but I one day moved away and later got married and had a family.  I would go see Sammy once or twice a year and I think he was very disappointed but, unlike so many others in my life, he never let it show and never said a word about it. 

I don’t know if he ever realized how different he was.  To me not strange really but different.  He seemed to know what he knew and did not know what he did not know and, for him, that was always enough.  It served him well and lasted a lifetime.  He rarely smiled or laughed but he never cried and never yelled.  He just was.

I got the call one day from his doctor who told me Sammy was in a bad way and, this time, likely not to recover.  Even at that point none of the doctors he had ever seen- and there were many- were ever able to diagnose Sammy’s condition.  They tried drugs and they tried analysis and even twice tried surgery when he was younger and still in the care of his parents but nothing ever changed and Sammy just kept being Sammy.

Sammy hated human contact but now that I was at his bedside he seemed to know he was in trouble and he asked to hold my hand.  He squeezed it hard and then just kept a grip on it as he managed a deep and toiled breath.

“For too long I wondered about my trip to the ocean when I was very young.  Do you remember that?”

“I do.  You went with your parents to visit your grandparents somewhere in California I think.”

“Yes, it was there.  I remember being in the water but feeling scared.  Probably one of the first times I can remember being so afraid.  Later on when I was older I often wondered if any of the water that had washed over me had ever washed over any one else and if it had ever touched someone who was normal and went on to live a normal life” he said slowly, softly.

I looked at him but no words came.  I guess he understood what I could not put into words though.

“All of my life I have wondered about that.  And all of my life I have known that I would never know.  Never know” he said, closing his eyes as he turned away briefly.

Slowly and finally he turned back, looked again at me, and swallowed hard.

“You know, ” he said as his fading eyes seemed to just slightly moisten, “I really died my first time a long time ago when I first decided not to really live.  There at the sea.  This time around though I think it might the final time, the last time.  And I now know for certain that I will never know.  I think I’ve run out…of time.”

And with the slightest and to me the saddest of sighs he expired.  And it was almost at once as if he had, indeed, never even existed.

His only communicated wish in life for his death was to be cremated but he could never really bring himself to ever say it or write it quite that way.  He never said directly what was to be done with the ashes but, there, at his bedside, I realized that I finally knew.