Life Is Good
Recall
I am looking at a photograph of us. We were standing on an outcrop of white, windblown sandstone, high above the desert floor, somewhere near Moab, Utah. The midday sun was bright; we both appear well tanned and possibly a little slimmer from days of mountain biking. 
He was dressed in gray khaki shorts, a plain, faded green T-shirt, Teva sandals, and a pair of dark sunglasses, which seemed to prop up his dense brown wavy bangs. Who knows, maybe it was that day, the culmination of a fun week, or perhaps every satisfying thing he had done in his life up to that day that seemed to be rendered in his beaming cheek-to-cheek grin. Both of us, hands committed firmly to our hips, stand facing the sun, a vanquished desert plain splayed out behind us like a place where nature had been defeated, or staging to begin again. The heat of that day was all around us, and still this photograph gives me chills.
I know why he was smiling. Because he told me most every time we were together, when we looked forward to the future that, life is good. He meant it. It wasn't a cliché for him. He said it as if he had given the matter a great deal of thought, as though he could have drawn a different conclusion, like some people do, that life sucks. In that way I have to say I fed off him a little bit. Though I never told him that.
History
We had both worked for the same large oil company, but had not met until our paths crossed in a division office in Alaska. When first introduced, I had no desire to know him beyond professional acquaintance, but I don’t recall not liking him. His office was like a dark fortress. Piles of books, reports, unread company memorandums, and who knows what else were stacked on two chest high bookcases in front of his desk, which served to completely occlude his view of the hallway outside his door. You couldn't casually pause at his doorway, wave, and say, "Hi, Fritz." If you wanted to say something to him, anything, you had to commit yourself to several steps inside the bowels of his unlit office where, if he was there, you’d find him hunkered down behind his desk - cluttered beyond hope - in the glow of a dim desk lamp either typing at his computer keyboard or, as years passed and I became more curious about him, his attention locked by some recondite book that bore no relevance to what he was ostensibly employed to do.
We began to come into contact more often because we worked in the same department, and reported to the same two managers we both came to loathe. The finest of friendships are shaped by common dislikes, not shared tastes or preferences. It was like that with Fritz and I. My earliest memory of the beginning of our relationship away from the office involved countless conversations over cheap beer at a squalid bar near work where we commiserated over the futility of management. We talked long and often about what we’d do when we broke away from the golden handcuffs of corporate life, how we’d re-invent ourselves and learn from the mistake we both found ourselves in. Actually, I had never considered my work with the company to be a mistake, per se, but Fritz sure did. Not only that, but his former company as well. Imagine recalling the last eighteen years of your professional life and not having one good thing to say about it. That was Fritz. He was determined to re-invent himself, dissatisfied with the stagnant and perfunctory (he called it that) day-to-day plod of a futureless corporate job.
When we talked about these things I began to think that maybe I should give more consideration to whether or not I was living up to my potential. Other times I would play devil’s advocate and challenge his conclusion that his years with the company were a complete waste of his time, by reminding him of the things those years of employment had bought him – literally. He shrugged off the materialism argument. Even though he had accumulated plenty, he was more a man of the mind, a polymath in some sense, or at least as close to one as anyone I had ever known. His values, I came to learn, were invested in a satisfied curiosity, but even more than that he feared the end of learning. He was restless in his eagerness to discover the upper limit of his intellectual potential. He was adamant about that. I never had, and still haven’t met anyone who was more adamant about it than he was. It didn't matter whose company he was in, he always found an opportunity to interject his contempt for mediocrity, regardless of the subject of the conversation. This annoyed some people -- his dogged insistence that they were capable of more. Not me. I found his endless nipping at the ankles on the matter to be a sensible caution against complacency, if not also a kind of self-reproving reminder against becoming so.
Even so, we both held a master’s degree, had done pretty well for ourselves in the company, so it was here where Fritz presented somewhat of a contradiction for me. I turned our conversation to this often. In spite of his deep discontent with his professional situation at that time, I thought he had accomplished quite a bit in his life. He had raced sailboats when he worked in Texas, even co-owned a substantial racing yacht. He had involved himself in it well beyond a hobby, but you wouldn’t know that about him unless you pried a bit, and then he was delighted to talk about it. Another of his accomplishments that begged my envy was that he built his own house when he moved to Alaska. He lived in a tent part of that time, but he persevered and got it done. He once told me, in a philosophical moment, that a man ought to be able to build his own shelter. This impressed me, a lot, and for years after I thought I might like to do the same for myself. Years later he added a massive garage to his house, large enough, he had said, so that one day he could rebuild an entire airplane inside. He owned an engine from a Cessna that needed repair, and I never doubted that one day he would repair it and build himself an airplane. Fritz was more than a handy man; his acumen in building or repairing just about anything was well known at the office. Well known, at least, by those who knew anything about him, and those were just a few people because Fritz was an intensely private individual. By this time, because I knew him to be very private, even elusive with me, I was sure there were countless things about him I didn’t know. I was okay with this perimeter of privacy; friendships need a comfortable amount of space.
I sought his expertise more than once when taking on projects of my own. Projects that I might not have taken on had I not felt I could rely on him for help. In fact, I recall a sunny day in Alaska when he and I torched down dozens of rolls of asphalt membrane on the roof of my house. In a way I began to feel special because, as far as I could tell, I was one of the few people Fritz would voluntarily spend time with.
Along with his wife he raised champion Australian Shepherds; made a hell of a good raspberry Framboise, as well as other varieties of tremendous beer (even grew his own yeast, which he’d tell you about in arcane detail); read Shakespeare (and was happy to swap quotes with you); and he kept himself in superb physical shape, declining invitations to lunch during the work week, instead going to the gym to work out. It was probably this last that ultimately lead us into the next phase of our friendship.
In spite of his professional regrets Fritz was a demonstrably happy person. Without knowing him well I could understand why some people might be incredulous of that characterization. He presented a generally haughty and confident exterior, but as we spent increasingly more time together I saw his felicitous side more often. He talked of his vacation travel abroad, people he had met and places he wanted to return to. He speculated about opening his own business, maybe a brewpub, but wondered, in a notably rare moment of self doubt, if he had the business acumen to pull it off. Our conversations became richer; we talked of people who had accomplished a great deal in their life and conjectured the recipe for their success. We waxed seriously about returning to school to reinvent ourselves. Here I sensed Fritz had a much better idea of what he would do than I did if presented the opportunity. I shared his passion for a professional renaissance, but without ever taking myself too seriously, or confessing that I wasn’t as confident as he was. Fritz was serious. His GPA was better than mine, and so I knew it was more likely he would be accepted into a respectable university after having been away for eighteen years. Fritz rarely saw obstacles, only opportunity.
We became better friends, and could talk for hours. No matter what the topic of conversation, inevitably we ended up talking excitedly about our future away from the company. Typically prompted by commiseration over the present behind numerous glasses of beer after work. With the exception of his professional history, he clearly was glad he had done the things he had done in his life, and with sincere modesty conceded that his skills and interests away from work were notable, maybe even exceptional, but he talked them down nonetheless. It was there I saw the contradiction: someone undeniably accomplished – world traveler, dog breeder, brewer, house builder and master technician, physically fit with an insatiable intellectual curiosity - yet it held no lasting fulfillment for him. His own history was not worth dwelling on for Fritz. It wasn’t the things he had done that made him remark that life is good. It was the things undone, and the possibility of doing them that fueled his optimism and zeal for life. Always, always, always it was the future: How can I make myself better, how can I master this new endeavor, what new thing will fascinate me and expose me to new people who can stimulate my intellectual curiosity and move me still further into new challenges. That was what Fritz was all about. For as long as I’ve known him, it’s always been about the future. What’s next?
Two-wheeled Friends
I don’t recall when Fritz bought his first mountain bike but it was a dandy. A black Klein with modern components, the latest Shimano drive train, and a front suspension fork with more pivot points than I had ever seen. The linkage featured a novel parallelogram sort of operation that was annoyingly noisy by the time it finally wore out. Fritz laughed at its obsolescence when he traded the bike in for a new one a few years later. I had been a bike enthusiast for a long time. Fritz credited me with getting him interested in cycling, though if I provided the spark he did the rest, mostly I think because he saw the bike as a way to improve his fitness. Beyond that the shared enjoyment of mountain bike rides in the Alaska Mountains created more opportunities away from work for us to spend time together. Up to that time I hadn’t spent any time with Fritz on weekends. He had typically spent his summers involved in big projects at his home north of Anchorage, about 40 miles from where I lived at the time. It had been at work and during after work retreats to the bar where we first became friends, with a couple notable exceptions. There was the company golf tournament where we conceived the crazy idea to put together a foursome that included two strippers from a local club (we planned to tell people who asked that they were Fritz’s out-of-state cousins, or maybe mine, we couldn’t agree, but it didn’t matter because they were no-shows). And there was the all expenses paid Halibut fishing trip with a charter captain from hell who scolded Fritz repeatedly for lifting his own fish onboard the boat without the help of the crew. The same anal-retentive captain who vacuumed the galley floor because we had carelessly littered it with potato chip crumbs (!) that fell from the table where we ate lunch. At one point I thought Fritz was going to pick him up and throw him over the stern.
But when Fritz bought the Klein, we eagerly began spending weekends together riding in the mountains.
The following two summers I introduced him to my favorite rides. Just us two, we rarely rode with anyone else. At least once we rode each of the popular five or six trails on the Kenai Peninsula, and soon enough we purchased a trail guidebook and started going to the Talkeetna Mountains, near his house, for more challenging rides. We got bruised and scratched, broke bike parts, suffered countless flat tires (mostly me, which Fritz laughed about all the time), became lost on trails with useless directions; we got wet, cold, tired, and hungry; we startled black bears; we packed gear onto bike racks and pedaled to remote mountain cabins where we over-nighted. When the cold came to Alaska we packed up our bikes and flew to Moab, Utah -- the mountain biker’s Mecca. There we challenged ourselves still further, and by the time of his first trip there I could see that Fritz was getting significantly more fit, plus much more talented on his bike. He practiced various stunts on the trail, and our rides became mildly competitive: who could pedal through the most technical places without dismounting their bike, who could climb hills the fastest, or who could race through flowing water without hitting a rock and crashing. Like everything else for Fritz, biking wasn’t just about having fun and staying fit, it was as much about how much he could improve, could he become as acrobatic as those we both marveled at in mountain bike magazines. For me he was a very unique friend in this way. He was always upping the ante on what he was capable of, and nudging me along to do the same, to raise my expectations of what I was capable of.
We shared more intimate aspects of our lives on rides when we stopped to rest. I recognized this as something special, particularly for Fritz since he was obviously a very private individual, and I enjoyed it. We opened to each other. We discussed philosophy and politics frequently, shared similar beliefs regarding the merits of Libertarianism, and reinforced each other’s cynical laments of the status quo. We talked about home projects, sports, world events, our wives, sex, and genius – nothing escaped our commentary, whether either one of us knew anything about it or not. I have to say there were times when Fritz would talk excitedly about what interested him to the point of making me anxious about what I felt was my relative ordinariness. Sometimes I felt almost annoyed at having to listen to all the things that fascinated him, novel home projects he was involved in, or simultaneously some new area of science he was reading up on. But slowly I began to realize that he wasn’t an ordinary friend. Fritz, unlike anyone I had known before, was someone who genuinely effervesced with life and the opportunities it offered him, most of all what the future held for him. We talked about politics where we worked, criticized (good and bad) various co-workers, and when our industry was in trouble we returned to speculation about our future should either one of us get laid off.
Renaissance
In September of 1994 the speculation was over. Fritz was unexpectedly laid off. I was retained and remained with the company for another six years. The future we had talked so much about had finally arrived for him and he grabbed it by the horns. While I wallowed in a professional post-layoff malaise, Fritz set himself to reinvention. It wasn’t long before he entered the University and began taking courses in biology, anatomy, and others prerequisite for a career in medicine. Our after-work retirements to the bar had stopped because of different schedules. While I sought out others to carp with, Fritz had come to the conclusion that he wanted to become a medical doctor.
We saw each other less frequently the next couple years, probably because of different schedules, but also because we no longer shared the same day-to-day complaints. When we did meet to bike or simply talk, Fritz was suddenly more enthusiastic about his future because, at least scholastically speaking, he was doing very well, which of course didn’t surprise me a bit. Indeed I was envious. I think he could sense that because he encouraged me by saying that he was confident I’d be right behind him when it was my time to leave the company. With the passage of each additional year I remained at the company, I would occasionally slip back into self-doubt, but I tried to ward it off by becoming overtly enthusiastic about the potential beyond my job. A simple conversation with Fritz on the phone was sufficient to restore my optimism.
Ultimately, Fritz temporarily moved out of Alaska, to Kansas, where he became more busily involved in the rigors of medical school. We phoned each other even less often but managed to stay in contact via e-mail. One year, however, he had needed to travel to his parents’ house in Oregon. He had decided to drive and suggested I meet him in Denver. We could put our mountain bikes on his roof rack and do some rides we had talked about in Moab and Idaho, maybe even in Oregon, time permitting, he said. I jumped at the chance.
Over the time of two or three days we cycled in remote parts of Moab. In the evenings I listened to Fritz at dinner spill with enthusiasm for all the new knowledge he had gained in a field he was clearly excelling at. If he was private I had also known him to be modest, but one evening he was clearly so excited about his accomplishment at school that he confided in me he had made it onto the Who's Who list of American medical students. I never doubted he would do well, but this blew me away. I remember lifting a glass of wheat beer and toasting his success. Though the spirit of our friendship was still very much alive, I quietly felt myself slipping further into the shadow of his success. He was living what we had both talked about for so many years, while I was still talking about it.
We continued driving north and stopped in Idaho for two days. I wanted to discover a high mountain camp where I had done geologic fieldwork while I was in graduate school. We set out for the trailhead late one morning and ended up on an arduous, all day climb on our mountain bikes. A deep snowline stopped us short of our goal, which frustrated Fritz, someone who was always telling me: "Finish what you start." It was the most physically difficult day I had ever experienced on a mountain bike. Consulting maps later that night we discovered we had climbed some five thousand feet in the Idaho Rockies, ending up at an elevation of approximately twelve thousand feet. I was totally wiped on the car ride back to town; I hadn’t been able to keep up with Fritz on the climb. He was indefatigable that day. In the car on the way out he began talking about some detail of blood oxygenation at high altitude when all I could focus on was a tall glass of cold beer. Everything was coming together for him, and the one activity he credited me for turning him on to, he was, at least that day, now better at than I was. I recall feigning disinterest in his medical facts, and for the first time, maybe the only time, he actually seemed to get mad at me. It didn’t last long; by the time we reached town, showered, and went to dinner, it was forgotten. But for reasons I don’t understand I still remember that day and that conversation clearly.
The following year Fritz was temporarily living in Salt Lake City. It was so close to Moab I suggested he take a few days off and we go cycling. He agreed. We met in Salt Lake City, but we traveled to Moab separately because he had work to do at the hospital before he could leave. I recall waiting up for him late the next night at a bar in Moab and getting a little miffed because I was tired and he was several hours late. When he arrived, of course, he wanted to have a few beers and talk about his experiences at the hospital that day. I listened with half an ear and sensed he was disappointed that I didn’t share his fascination. Truthfully, I was tired, but didn’t let on that I couldn’t keep up with the pace of his enthusiasm. We tented in a quiet canyon that night and rode a few of our favorite trails during the day. In an attempt to keep my skills on parity with Fritz’s, I attempted to get "big air" with my bike off a short ledge that he had made look easy. I failed miserably and fractured the tip of my clavicle. We didn’t ride the next day because my pain was bad enough that I chose to go to the hospital for an x-ray. Later that afternoon we both drove back to Salt Lake City – me with my arm in a sling. I flew back to Alaska the next day.
Months passed and we chatted in email once or twice. Later that year Fritz returned to Alaska for Christmas break. This was 1999, ten years after we first met. We went to some of our favorite haunts in Anchorage and started into a long conversation as if we had never been geographically separated at all. It seemed comfortably natural and I was pleased to see him again. He was experiencing some personal difficulties in his life and I sensed he was looking to me for advice. We stayed out late and talked for a long time in my car before we finally said our good-byes (he had to return to Kansas to finish medical school). Then he got into his car and drove back home. It would be the last time I would see him.
Cancer
The following year, 2000, brought change for me. I finally left the company in October and took a new job in New Mexico. Fritz had graduated in the summer and moved to Phoenix to begin his residency. We talked in e-mail and he said he thought he’d be there for four years, or so. His emails were brief, but upbeat, and I enjoyed the fact that he signed them: "Your friend, Fritz." I was excited about the fact that we’d be living closer to one another, which might provide a chance for us to rendezvous in Utah or Colorado for a mountain bike trip. Most of 2000 was quite hectic for both of us, we managed to talk only occasionally in email. It wasn’t until I actually moved to New Mexico that I contacted him by phone. Right away we started into a long conversation, as if we had been only momentarily interrupted. For the first time in many years it was me who had a lot of new information and knowledge to share. I was anxious to hear Fritz’s reaction to my finally having left the company and my new position. He was supportive, but at the same time I sensed he was mildly puzzled why I didn’t go directly back to school like we had talked about. I told him I first had to get a taste of working as a professional away from the oil industry and see how far I could go. He agreed it was worthwhile and wished me well. We made a tentative plan to get together for a few days of riding in April, then I said goodbye and hung up the phone. That was last time I heard his voice.
Work consumed all of my time and several months passed without hearing from Fritz. I think it was late March or early April when I sent him a short email, hoping we could get caught up, and reminding him about our plan to ride. It wasn’t unusual for him to take his time replying, but nothing came back. Several more weeks passed before I sent him another email, this time scolding him for not replying to my last one. Nothing came back. I began to think that perhaps he was out of the country, and for whatever reason unable to read his email. He had talked about possibly traveling to Mexico to do some work related to his residency. Work began to consume even more of my time, my fiancée had arrived in New Mexico for the summer, and consequently several more weeks slipped my attention without a word from Fritz. I decided to call his cell phone. Twice in the course of a week I got his voice mail and told him I would continue to pester him until he returned my call or email. I was curious why he was unable to get back to me, but never really concerned.
July 4th, 2001: It’s Sunday, and I decide to go into work to catch up. My fiancée and her sons are off enjoying a day of rafting. I’m feeling mildly depressed without knowing why. I sit down in front of my computer and double-click the email icon. Instantly in the From list I see the email address of Fritz’s wife, Kiddy. We had talked in email only once before, when she sought my advice on a bike-related graduation gift for Fritz, so her address leaped out at me. The bottom drops out of my stomach before I read her message. The Subject line is blank. I double-click the entry and begin to read her short message. She says she didn’t know how to contact me, didn’t want to tell me in email, but she knew of no other way: "Fritz died on June 27th." I sat motionless in my chair, alone in a basement office, staring at the flashing cursor on the screen. She writes: "A rare form of cancer…no curative treatment…Fritz spoke well of you…I’m sorry to have to tell you this."
I called Kiddy the next morning and learned the rest. Fritz had begun to complain about a bloated stomach feeling that wouldn’t go away, sometime in late March. She was on her way down to Phoenix, but in advance encouraged Fritz to improve his diet and see a doctor if his pain persisted. By the time she arrived in Phoenix, Fritz was still in some pain and having difficulty sleeping. Kiddy said he also appeared a little peaked. Finally she got him to a doctor, who recommended he enter the hospital for tests. His kidney, pancreas, heart, and lungs, all looked fine, but there was a build up of fluid in his abdomen which, when it was extracted, was found to be swimming with cancer cells. At this point, I’m guessing Fritz approached the problem with his body like he would approach any other mechanical problem, with unshakable confidence that he could understand what was wrong and fix it. In light of the fact that he had just become a medical doctor, I’m sure his confidence was buoyed all the more. A thorough battery of tests, blood chemistry panels, x-rays, and MRIs turned up no sign of a tumor. Where the cancer cells were coming from remained a mystery. Early in June he was referred to a gastro intestinal specialist in Washington D.C.. He and Kiddy traveled there only to learn the bad news: Fritz had fell victim to peritoneal cancer, a rare form that attacks the connective tissue in the abdomen. Among other things it prevents the proper circulation of fluids in the peritoneal cavity, causing it to build up instead, which caused the bloated feeling he suffered from. Terribly, the cancer is rare and no curative procedure was available. They traveled back to Phoenix where eventually Fritz became bed ridden and stabilized on various medications. Within three weeks of the diagnosis his condition had worsened. One night, late, with Kiddy at his side, his breathing became erratic. Before a nurse could come to stabilize him, he died in his sleep.
Coda
Fritz had finished what he started as far as I’m concerned. He had completed his reinvention and stood as beautiful example of what an individual is capable of when they set their mind to it. I’m sure he didn’t see it that way. For him the future was an asymptote, a vision to pursue with every breath of his life, but nothing that you actually attain, not something you one day grasp and hold in your hand and exclaim, "I’m here, I made it!" No, for Fritz the future was forever reinventing itself as well. There was always some new provocative challenge begging his pursuit. I don’t think I will ever enjoy another friendship like the one I had with Fritz. He used to say: "Life is good." Yes, my friend, life is good, your life was good, and the world is a little worse off because yours is over.
Godspeed, Fritz, Godspeed.
Your friend,
Rod
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