Daniel Ferrante

When I was younger, over half of my life ago, I had a friend named Nathan Fisk. I can’t say we were best friends, though at times we were close - and I can’t say that we had much animosity between us, though at times we argued.

What I can say with certainty is that he was a fun friend. We met in 1984 when I was in sixth grade and my family had just left “The Italian Church” and moved to Bethel Church.

We hung out a lot until the mid 1990’s. At that point, we had both graduated from High School and he had joined the military and moved to Texas. (I may have some of those details wrong, not sure…).

One particulary fond memory I have is of he and I and Todd at our youth pastor’s house. Todd and I managed to date the two best looking girls in the youth group (How did we manage that, Todd? Was it being in the church band?). The youth group was headed to Disneyland, and our youth pastor invited ALL of us to spend the night at his place, go swimming, hang out, etc. With two rules:

1. We were in bed by midnight

2. Boys in one room, girls in the other

Well, the three of us never really followed the rules (nor did we often cause problems) so we hung out in the kitchen chatting about, of all things, the economic situation in Russia (it was 1991 and communist Russia was collapsing). Our girlfriends came into the kitchen and asked us what we were talking about.

“The economic situation in Russia.”

“No, really, what are you talking about?”

“The economic situation in Russia.”

“Look, if you don’t want to tell us, just say so!!”

Todd and I still laugh about it.

I wish I could say that Nathan and I remained close, but, as I said before, we drifted apart. And, not only did we drift apart, the last time we spoke, I was quite rude to him. I won’t recount what happened or what I said, that’s between him and me. It was certainly not my finest moment.

Unfortunately I never got to apologize to Nathan for what I said and did. He died April/May of this year. The same day I found out about receiving the job here in France is the same day I got word that he had died.

The first few weeks here, I did nothing but dream about Nathan. It was almost always the same thing - either he was still alive, he had come back to life or he as visiting me as a ghost. In my dreams he kept saying that he never understood why I was still upset about what happened or he would say it wasn’t such a big deal. I finally accepted that what had happened was in the past and to let it be, let it rest with Nathan. It was then that the dreams stopped.

Nathan was nothing if not forgiving, and I would like to think that had I called him and apologized he would have accepted and then acted like nothing had happened between us to begin with.

I’ll never know. But I am sure that’s how it would have happened.

I was talking to Katharina about this last night. It’s odd how his memory creeps up on me from nowhere… She said nothing and simply hugged me.

I miss you, Nate. Somehow, for some weird reason, there’s a little bit of you here in Dijon.

I hope I get to see you again someday.