Death of a Friend

One of the disadvantages of amnesia - is you can remember nothing, not even decades long friends whom were family.  If they disappeared, for whatever reason, there is no memory, no way to tell them you are suffering.  It does not help if the one you were forced to rely on hated their guts either.

Don Volkman was a brother and I lost him across his cancer treatments and my surgeries, but I could not know it.

I first met Don back in 1980.  I had flown to Bellevue, Washington with a fairly complete presentation of minerals from one of my mining interest areas.  He was an odd duck, he had come to a Friends of Mineralogy Symposium and we both brought minerals from Butte, Montana.  We looked at each other, looked over the displays, shook hands and became lifelong friends.

Whereas my specialty was miineralogy of tellurium and selenium bearing deposits and he copper oxides, we were not in competition - we were complementing each other.  Which of course, strengthened friendship.  Even when I moved and we could only see one another perhaps once or twice a year when I swung through the Pacific Northwest or the Tucson Gem & Mineral Show, it was always to opening of the microscopes and we were off on a 20 - 30 hour session of identifying minerals from the Butte Mines.  (My mining partner, at that time had just finished building a molybdenum concentrator at Butte, so we were awash in specimens!)

We did several field trips, collecting, studying, documenting new finds.  I turned his son on to Mindat, an online database of minerals and localities I had been involved in.  He went on to building a large photo collection on there, as well a definitive book on the fossils of Republic, Washington.

Don often referred to me as his little brother and often stated he wished we really were.  We adopted each other as it was.  His wife would laugh and laugh at the two us.  She was a lovely lady but I have no memory of even her name - just seeing her laughing at the two us while she knitted.

His wife died of cancer many years ago and it was the end of him.  He had met her in Junior High and they never parted, marrying straight out of High School and him taking up work as a welder for a Seattle shipyard.  Eventually, shipbuilding died in Seattle, he was laid off, his wife came down with cancer  and died.  I expected him to disappear for a spell, but not for years.  I would still try to see him once a year but there was no old Don home anymore, he was deflated and defeated.

Then in 2013 my leg problem started, his car had troubles and he was unable to visit and I could not drive but we would talk on the phone.  Then surgery and my mind with all memories went out the window.

It took his daughter getting a hold on me last night to even remember and only vaguely someone whom had been so important to me and my growth in the realm of mineralogy.

As I continue to heal, I had hoped with time, I would remember my friends and they would return.  Not to learn that they could not live that long ...

I cling to the memory he was a Christian - I cling to God's blood covering him, as well as me, to see us both into Heaven ...  the only hope any of us has.