Don Bieber

I was going through an old email account I no longer use due to excessive spam. Some of my friends never caught on and continued to send me stuff via that account. Don Bieber, a good friend I had while living in California, was one such man. I met him through a running club. He was 25 years older than me and was the only person I kept in email contact with in Monterey. He always wrote me in German, a passion of his.

He was born in NYC and moved to Monterey with his wife Cindy in 1967 after a stint in Vietnam. Cindy died years ago, and Don kept his sanity by running most days around Pacific Grove. He'd run in road races around the area.

I remember telling him about my Iraq deployment and that I wouldn't be writing much while over there. Perhaps I forgot to tell him that I was back in the US in 2008; when I'd occassionally would get on that email account I'd just end up deleting row after row of junk mail.

I checked that account again tonight. Again, row after row of junk email advertisting penis enlargements, lottery winnings out of Nigeria, invites to sex pages, etc filled the bandwidth. I deleted them all without reading any of them.

And then I came across two email from Don dated July 2009. Oh my goodness I thought, I had forgotten about him, and my first thought was that he had died since there weren't any newer email from him.

A quick Google search of his name revealed that exact fear. Don had died in his Monterey home on 2 October 2009 at the age of 74. The online obit didn't say much else about him. The enclosed photo of him revealed his as I remember him to be: tall, thin and forever optimistic.

I wrote Don an email apologizing for not having written much sooner. He never answered back.

This is a stern reminder that I need to try harder to stay in contact with people. I found a few other old email. Had I stayed in Monterey longer I would have hiked and ridden my bike more with Don, but our days together were too short and we were so busy with our own lives.

I'm sorry, Don, for ignoring you these last few years. May you rest in peace.