When I was about five years old I had the most awful crush on Ben Neiman. Andy wasn’t yet invented, much less his siblings; but “Lanie” became one of my all-time favorite names, and Ben entranced me as he moved through my parents’ house in the 1970s. I don’t know how our parents knew each other. But I remembered Lanie and Ben a thousand years later when I was working at COCA and heard the name Andy Neiman and wondered…
Andy and I were immediate friends upon meeting each other, as though time was just tapping its fingers waiting for us to finally intersect. We took walks together on our lunch breaks. I remember his slim, lithe body and the way his arms swung as we talked about anything, everything, life and love and pain and silliness and words, always more words. Andy became dear to me in the short time that we were close — maybe a year, maybe two — but we would run into each other once in a while (it IS St. Louis) and every time, we were deeply happy to see each other. Our hugs said everything that we had ever spoken to each other: the depth and the appreciation and the little sideways crushes we kinda’ had and the understanding and the safety and the ease of an unencumbered friendship.
I took for granted that we would run into each other again in life, over and over, and share either another wonderful conversation or one of those conversational hugs, an exchange of true connection between us. I cried when I found out that this would be impossible, and that the world lost this sweet, open soul, always searching, always wondering, always imagining. I already miss Andy, and I send my love back in time and forward now too, to you, his family, to whom I am now connected in grief.
Leave a Reply