“You will always be my favorite good friend,” Julie from Iowa messaged me this morning. It caught my attention; it felt like a goodbye message. Julie and I met only once at a book reading in Iowa years ago, but we never lost touch.
I got this photo from Julie this morning. She took it from the window of her senior living apartment in Iowa, where we met at a book tour I was on while touring the country for Random House, my publisher. It felt like a goodbye.
“You’re a real sweetheart,” Jon. Okay, got some tears out of that. “Maria is a lucky girl,” she added.
The message above is a picture Julie took this week to send to me. I think it’s one of the most beautiful pictures I have seen.
I met a lot of people on my book tours, but no one touched my heart as deeply as Julie. I heard from her on every birthday and around Christmas, and when she read, messaged in between to check in and say hello.
I never saw her again after the night we met, but she wrote me faithfully, and we always stayed in touch. Julie is 89 now. Julie had no use for blue and red labels; she just loved everyone.
I’m not sure I will hear from Julie again. Her message this morning was bleak and brief, something very new for her. She always wrote with a Midwestern smile. It was always a pleasure to meet with people like Julie. It is in their blood to be kind. She had a simple life, but loved it and was proud of it.
Julie and I are quite different, but she came to the bookstore to hear me talk, introduced herself, and we have been e-mailing each other regularly ever since. She loved my book, she said, but the friendship was more; we somehow connected.
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Julie and Roger right after their marriage.
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Something about her message to me this morning felt different, although I always knew Julie to be cheerful and optimistic. This message was not like her; the spark had gone out.
Julie was Midwestern all the way, a simple person who led a simple life with a big heart. Midwestern people are very different from city people; they take the time to know one another and are notoriously kind to strangers. Everywhere I went to talk, people invited me over for dinner and offered me a guest room.
(Random House loved me at the time; I was always given pre-arranged rooms in 4-Star hotels. They would never have given the green light to staying over with a reader.)
Julie worked all of her life as a private secretary in the days when that was the norm, before computers eliminated jobs like that.
Julie had suffered already in her life. She lost her first husband but had fallen in love again with Roger, a former college teacher who taught auto mechanics. They had a lovely life together; she was happy to be married to Robert on the beach at Hilton Head. She was very happy. Roger was a miracle for her, and I think for him, too.
It was a great marriage; the two just adored one another. The love was infectious. I always smiled when I got a message from Julie.
It was a beautiful marriage, Julie kept telling me, a great love of two nice people at mid-life.
She sent the sweetest and kindest messages, and I always answered her back. She was so very American, tolerant, kind, and hopeful. Roger died years ago, and Julie began to decline. I think she never quite recovered from his loss.
Her daughters moved her into an elderly care facility, and she never liked it there. But I was the only one she told, she wrote. She didn’t want to hurt her daughter’s feelings.
I’ve never been good at making friends, but Julie and I hit it off from the beginning. Her love of Roger and of life was inspiring.
I’m not all that religious, but if there is a God and St. Peter makes the decisions, she’s going straight there. Bless you, Julie. You were and are a gem.
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Julie on vacation with Roger at Bailey’s Harbor in Maine. She loved their trips together and always sent a photo. That smile is quite genuine. “I always loved the East,” she said.
Today’s message was uncharacteristically brief. “Right now I’m sick,” she wrote, “my girls are moving me to something cheaper and smaller.”
She added, “You’ll always be my favorite good friend, Jon.” Same to you, Julie, if you are reading this.” I told her I would send some flower photos to her new home if she could give me the address.
I wish her peace and imagine that Roger is waiting for you wherever she goes.
