My friend Jennifer passed peacefully in her sleep at 1:30 on Thursday morning, with her three children and I in her hospice room.
Friday
night while I was driving back to Manhattan from Princeton, New Jersey, I couldn't help think about when my husband, Jerry, was in hospice care. When I
arrived home, it occurred to me that how without Jennifer, I probably
would never have met Jerry.
There
are days in our lives that are simply magical. One such day was
Friday, November 24th, the day after Thanksgiving Day, in 1967. I was
twenty-years-old, in my third year at Caltech in Pasadena, California,
and majoring in Applied Mathematics.
On Thanksgiving Day, I had dinner in Caltech’s dinning hall with
Jennifer and her roommate Sandy. We weren’t close friends, we had
smoked weed (we called it "Grass" back then) a few times. Both of them
had a "hipper than thou" attitude, but they were always friendly enough,
and the campus was empty due to the holiday, so why not? After
dinner, the conversation turned to contraception. I gave them the name and address
of a nearby woman Doctor who prescribed "The Pill" to unmarried women,
and a pharmacy that didn’t ask questions, or look at your ring finger
(who’s hipper now, bitches?). "The Pill" in 1967 was illegal for
unmarried women and would remain so until 1972.
On
our table was a copy of the psychedelic newspaper, The San Francisco
Oracle. After reading a few articles, I said to Jennifer, "LSD sounds
very interesting" to which she replied, "Let’s do some tomorrow!" Sandy
smiled and nodded her head in agreement. Jennifer and Sandy had dropped acid a few times before, but I was a newbie to the Psychedelic drug scene. I had smoked weed for the first time only a few months earlier in July, during summer break back home in Brooklyn with Denise "The Grease". Jennifer
got up, walked across the dinning hall, sat at another table for a few
minutes, came back, opened her hand, and showed us three sugar cubes, that had a spherical red stain in the middle.
We made arraignments to meet at their place after lunch the next day.
That
evening, I was trying to solve a differential equation, but I couldn’t
concentrate due to the anxiety I was feeling about dropping acid. Would
I think I could fly, and jump off of Jennifer and Sandy’s roof? What
kind of hallucinations would I have, and what would I see? What about
those bum trips? Flashbacks? The media was reporting stories on
chromosomal damage and genetic mutations, and I wanted to have children
at some point in my life! There was also a rumor going around, that you
could be declared legally insane if you took LSD more than five times.
But then I thought about how everything they told us about weed in high
school was complete and utter nonsense. Also, I knew LSD was wildly popular in
certain intellectual circles, and that was a "club" I wanted to join.
The next day, while walking to Jennifer and Sandy’s place, I was more than apprehensive. It was raining, and I had a few records under
my arm, that I was trying to keep dry. When I arrived, Sandy was
making some kind of herbal tea, and on their kitchen table incense was
burning. Jennifer walked into the kitchen and handed out the sugar
cubes. We let the sugar cubes dissolve in our mouths, smoked a joint,
and then sat there as if we were waiting for a bus or something, chain-smoking
cigarettes.
Twenty
minutes or so later, The Doors first album was playing, the room looked
exactly the same and yet somehow different, everything had a glossy
sheen that it didn’t have thirty minutes ago. Sandy was rolling a
joint and started to giggle, which caused all of us to laugh. I felt
hyper aware, and in amazement I watched rain drops rolling down the
window. The Doors sounded incredible, and I wished I had a piano to
play.
Tim Buckley’s album "Goodbye and Hello" was playing, and
Sandy goes very quiet and was staring across the room. Jennifer and I
looked at each other and start laughing. I lit a cigarette, and it felt
like the cigarette was smoking me. There was an exposed brick wall in
the living room that I couldn't stop staring at, it almost looked like it was
breathing and there were all these little colored lights dancing around between
myself and the wall. I felt euphoric, and thought back to the article I
read in The San Francisco Oracle regarding "The Cosmic Joke" and I
started laughing hysterically. I wondered if this was enlightenment or
if I was having grandiose delusions, or maybe both, and thought, who knows, who
cares? It was now 7PM,
we’d been tripping for six hours, I was still very high, but it was not
as intense. I decided to leave, so I thanked, and said goodbye to
Jennifer and Sandy.
Walking home across campus, my mind was
racing, and I knew my psyche had taken a quantum leap. I thought about
my abstract algebra class that was so confusing, but now I saw it in a
different light, "I can do this!" I thought to myself. As I was walking, there was a large puddle from the day’s rain. As I stepped to avoid it, I saw the reflection of the moon in it. It looked beautiful, a light breeze made it ripple, and I started laughing. As I bent over to take a
closer look, I heard a voice behind me say, "Are you OK?" I turned
around and standing there was an athletic looking guy with
shoulder-length hair, who looked concerned, "I’m fine" I said, still
giggling. "I thought you were crying" he said, followed by "What’s so
funny, anyway?" I told him,
"The universe is what’s so funny!". He gave me a knowing look,
smiled, and said, "Last Saturday the universe was a funny place for me
too. Take care, and happy trails" and walked away. When I got home, I listened to Albert Ayler's 'Spiritual Unity', then played my old beat up piano, smoked joints, and chain-smoked
cigarettes thinking about the day's events.
The
following Monday at lunchtime, I was back in the in Caltech dinning
hall waiting to be served, when a voice said, "How funny is the universe
today?" It was the guy from Friday night, I told him, "It's still
funny, but not as funny as it was last Friday ". He laughed and said, "Probably
not as beautiful either, right?" I smiled. He then said, "I’m Jerry, and
you are?" I told him. "I'm Barbara, but everyone calls me Babs" "Would
you like to join me, Babs?" Jerry asked. We had lunch, blew off our
afternoon classes, made each other laugh while having the most wonderful
conversation. Little did we know that afternoon, we would be making
each other laugh, and our conversation would flourish for the next
forty-five years.
Jennifer and I became close friends. After we graduated, we kept in touch, which was a commitment back then. Long distance phone calls were expensive, so letter writing was necessary.
Jennifer went on to become a research and development scientist for a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, where she and her husband, Mark (RIP) started their family. Our families were close with each other, Mark and Jerry became good friends, as did our children. We saw a lot of each other, and shared holidays, birthdays, and anniversaries together.
She was survived by three
children, and four grandchildren.
I'm going to miss her...
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