Greg – Memory of an Encounter
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Series Introduction: For our 45th high school reunion in 2013, we made stand up table displays of our departed classmates. We also solicited written tributes and memories from their friends and classmates, and we displayed the photo tributes on decorated tables and placed the written memories on the tables next to the photo of the departed classmate for others to read. Inevitably, we now add more tributes at each five-year reunion. The cover photo of this posting is a collage of the photo tributes we have made over the years.
This encounter with Greg, though brief, brought one of my college roommates back into focus in my life, and I wrote of both of them in this tribute.
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Greg and I knew each other in high school, but we were not friends. After graduation, we essentially followed our own paths and I only ran into him once, in 1976 or 1977 probably, but that chance meeting was very impactful.
In 1976/1977, I was working for the federal government in Van Nuys. I only lived a mile from the federal building so I would walk or ride my old bike to work. If I rode my bike, I would chain it up in the bike rack next to the public library. One day after work –spring or summer as the leaves were still on all the trees in the plaza – I was walking to my bike and, lo and behold, I see Greg sitting on a concrete bench writing in a notebook and I don’t know why but I was very glad to see him, and I was very glad I so easily recognized him. I went up to him and I said, “Greg, Greg, I’m Chris Orozco, I was in your class at Alemany. Do you remember me? How are you?”
Greg looked up from his notebook and maybe I sensed a tinge of tiredness or sleepiness upon his face, but he looked at me, his head moving side to side very so slightly and he said without smiling and sort out of some sort of fog, “Yes, I remember you.” And I started to talk. I asked him what he was doing here. Was he writing in a journal? I used to write a lot in journals. And he nodded and moved his head and looked at me more than verbally answering and since I was very happy to see him, I told him that I worked just across the street and told him what I did and as I talked, I realized there was something very familiar about Greg, there was something that I had seen before. Then there came into Greg’s eyes a wide-eyed look, a look of too much of something and he said, “I’ve got to go now.” And I was surprised, and Greg just got up and took his notebook and walked away in front on the library then turned the corner and he was gone.
For a while, I just looked at the point from where he vanished and then I realized what had been so familiar about Greg. It was the way his eyes and head moved and responded, and then seemed not to respond, and the look of being overwhelmed – it was the same look that came upon Larry.
Larry was one of my roommates for much of my first three years of college who developed schizophrenia after our junior year. And I remembered with Larry one of the most poignant moments between us in the apartment, in the kitchen, in the perpetually dirty and messy kitchen, was when Larry came upon me from behind and turned me around to look at him. He then put his hands upon my shoulders and looked at me with a tired, caged-animal look and he said, “You don’t lecture me anymore.” And I was stunned and saddened because that was true, for in trying to be a better friend to him I had stopped lecturing him on getting to school on time, to going to class, to stop sleeping through the day, and now he just looked at me with a tired exhausted look. He held me by the shoulders for a moment longer, then he looked down, released me and walked away. In four months, he was literally locked up in a mental hospital.
So, as I stood there in Van Nuys still looking to where Greg had vanished, I decided I was going to try to help Greg. I came back to the bench at different times of the day and sometimes at night for a month to see if I could find Greg again. I tried to think if I knew who his friends had been at Alemany, but I did not know anything of his life in high school. This was all sad to me. But I also at the same time made a decision to be as involved as I could in Larry’s life. I wasn’t married yet, so I went to visit him in Orange County; I brought him up a few times to stay with me for the weekend. I wrote letters and postcards when I traveled for work. I phoned him. And I was grieved when Larry died about fifteen years later probably of a blood clot to his heart after prostate surgery – prostate surgery in his early forties!!? An autopsy wasn’t performed, and he was just carted away and cremated, even before his parents found my phone number on the same yellow pad of paper I had written it on for Larry years before, to tell me Larry had died. By the time I knew he had died, everything of Larry was literally gone. I didn’t get to say goodbye. His parents invited me to speak at his funeral because I was the friend who kept most in touch with him over the years.
And, so, I was also grieved when I heard Greg had died – homeless it seemed, and alone on a public bench in Long Beach if I heard the story correctly. And yet I also heard there were friends who still had cared for him, and I was glad, as even though I don’t know the causes of schizophrenia and other mental illnesses, I do know that the opportunity I had to emotionally and physically care for Larry as much as I could was a gift to me that has lifelong blessings attached to it. I also knew that my meeting with Greg also had lifelong blessings attached to it, and that others cared for Greg, and I am thankful to the Lord for Greg in what he received, and for the others who cared for him for what they gave and what they gained.
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Moments of Seeing & Occasional Pieces – Writing In The Shade Of Trees
Poignant and sad. It is terrible to lose a real friend. I lost one of my dearest friends from my early days as a school administrator. I was a school program coordinator. Lydia was my aide. I moved on in my career and she also became my husband’s aide when he was a teacher. I was overjoyed to hear she would be his aide. She got colon cancer and died about 3 years after her diagnosis> We were very. very close. For a while we would walk together around our neighborhood and share memories. I can honestly say of all my friends after high school, as best friends go, she was pretty much one of the dearest and still sorely missed. I know she is with Jesus now and her husband and no longer suffering. Rest in peace, sweet friend. I thank the Lord that my husband and I had a best friend who also happened to be our teacher’s aide during a short but very wonderful time.