Cut off the telephone

When someone says they've lost a friend they usually mean they've fallen out with them. The realization finally struck me this weekend that I had lost one in a far more permanent way; that I had also foolishly neglected the friendship for so long (thanks to geography, social scenes and the ever-intervening mess of live's administrative duties) that it was only on losing him that I was jolted into reminiscing about how much had been lost.

I can still remember the gutwrench I felt when I was told my grandmother had just died, over seven years ago now. It was like a dozen ligatures tearing, like my heart had ripped in two and the halves were falling, falling through me, snapping thin things as they dropped. My reaction a couple of weeks ago when I first found out Dan had died (I write that with a pervading sense of disbelief that it's true) was more emotionally muted: I suppose "of course", as he hadn't brought me up for some twenty-five years including my childhood. But the tears shed at his memorial service on Sunday, from people whose sarcastic air of detachment I had spent an undergraduacy contemplating from slightly afar, jolted me into feeling all too much myself.

There we all were at the reception after the service, discussing a man who had been two months younger than me, a man whose acquaintance I had almost criminally neglected since he moved to New York. Discussing him a little bit like a celebrity, a little bit like an essay topic, but also as though he was only on the other side of the room, mingling with a different crowd, making his way over and soon to turn up at our table.

Any time now, he would bring his short, stout body, big, strong guffaws, gleeful smile and crinkled-up eyes over and poke fun at us in his odd mix of Scottish and German accents. If you said something unexpected, he'd cock his head and moue his mouth at you, his blue eyes staring wildly from underneath a tangled bird's nest of hair. He'd do all this, when he finally came over to your table, and he'd be over soon. Any time now, he'd be here: grip your chair, blink your eyes and wish it.

Dan was a charming, clever, eccentric, chaotic, big-hearted man. A joy and only occasionally annoying to have as a neighbour for two years, he would boom Beethoven's 9th through the wall at me and I would respond with Radiohead. He had a sharp wit and tastes somehow both epicurean—fine wines, good beer—and catholic—Patricia the Stripper, for heaven's sake.

He was thoughtful and unassuming in his cleverness, the sheer scope of which (he had been published only recently in both Nature and Science) I only really appreciated after hearing colleagues speak at the service. He worried gently and unobtrusively about his friends, keeping parties moving and always ready to share a quiet word if you needed it. Some of his quiet words saved my life once.

I will miss him immensely and hollowly, like a scooped-out, barren rock sounding in the darkness. He leaves a gap in me, a razed space in my mental landscape, where I had quite forgotten he had happily established a foothold and even set up camp. It was a tenure he'd quit only temporarily, with both of us probably fully expecting he would one day return and put the tent back up.

But now I know he won't. Goodbye, Dan.