Farrell had his own closet. Both of us had grown up with the church as an influence and, in '80s Texas, the closet felt safe, if a little smothering. It took me moving to California for us to finally come out to one another, not via conversation--somehow too risky--but by an exchange of letters. Whew! Not we could grow together, a lifetime ahead of us to build on our friendship.
When you have a friendship you know will last, there is always time. Another conversation, another visit. The gaps don’t matter. You pick up right where you left off. Farrell and I had that foundation. After law school, I moved to Vancouver. We continued to keep in touch, mostly by mail.
In March 1996, I called on his birthday. A woman with a thick drawl answered. Sorry, no Farrell. She’d had the number a few months. I figured Farrell had moved. Back then, most people didn’t have cell phones, Farrell (and me) included, and phone numbers didn’t transfer to a new home. I knew he’d lost his job which hadn’t made sense since he was smart, loyal and conscientious…a model employee. Maybe he found a roommate or got a cheaper apartment. He’d mentioned keeping busy by volunteering at the Dallas AIDS Resource Center to do their bookkeeping.
Three days after his birthday, I sent him a card knowing the post office would forward it. I ended my note with:
Write me a quick note when you receive this so I know how to contact you.
Take care & please keep in touch.
Two months later, as I checked my mail after a gym workout, on my way to join my new Vancouver friends for coffee, the card sat in my post office box, stamped twice in red: RETURNED TO SENDER. My heart sank. Reconnecting with Farrell would require more effort. Calling directory assistance would hopefully do the trick.
But then, as I sat with my coffee, waiting for friends to get their lattes, I looked again at the envelope. I gripped the edge of the table. I felt the breath knocked out of me. Above where I’d written Farrell’s address in blue ink was a note in a lighter blue ink on one of five red lines from the return to sender stamp: “deceased.” I needed a friend to confirm I was reading things right.
It still stuns me when I look at the notation. How often did mail processors write this? Did they think anything of it? Did they wonder even for a second how the “sender”—that’s all I was as far as they were concerned—would react upon receiving it? Did they assume the addressee was someone far older than thirty-seven? They were just doing their job, working through stacks of mail.
In the spring of ’96, it was common to grab coffee with my gym friends and have AIDS come up in conversation. Several friends and acquaintances from Denman Fitness were HIV+ or had AIDS. Some appeared visibly frailer by the week. Some died. Our regular coffee spot in Vancouver’s West End was THE place for gays to congregate. We jockeyed for outside seating or stools by the window so we could cast our eyes on the men filing in and out or strolling by on the sidewalk. Not a coffee passed without the vestiges of AIDS in view—KS lesions; gaunt eyes; rough, discolored skin; canes for assistance; wheelchairs pushed by a friend or lover. My shock over Farrell’s death didn’t land with my friends. There was a certain numbness by then. So much death required some degree of emotional distancing to carry on, to not succumb to anger and despair.
I can only deduct that Farrell died of AIDS. It was, after all, going around. It’s what gay thirty-somethings died of. It’s likely the reason he lost his job in conservative, God-fearing Dallas. (Did he lose it or was he too unwell?) It’s why he connected with the AIDS Resource Center. His cards mentioned being restless, wishing he could find a job and feeling financial strain. It shatters me every time I think about what he kept from me. Did he think I was too busy? He'd known I’d volunteered at AIDS Project Los Angeles. Why the barrier? Had self-hate and shame kicked back in?
I don’t know how he died, whether it was at home, in hospice or in hospital. I don’t know if he was alone or had a friend, maybe more, by his side, checking in on him, holding his hand at the end, gently telling him it was okay to let go.
I have quietly lived with mourning and missing Farrell. As with many of my friends, we always socialized one to one. That’s common among introverts which we both were. The conversations are better, the attention undivided. There was no one to call for answers or to mutually console.
For years now, I’ve wanted to make a panel to honor and remember him as part of the AIDS Quilt. I’ve researched it, I’ve planned what to put on it: symbols for tennis, the symphony, accounting, the University of Dallas and New Orleans Mardi Gras. I went to a quilting store on Granville Island to get a particular hardy tarp-like fabric for the panel, but they didn’t carry it. That one stumbling block was enough to let a simmering doubt boil over. I have a large button I can’t sew back on my jacket. I have jean pockets with unseen holes that need to be stitched. These tasks are not in my wheelhouse. I’m challenged with even threading a needle. How would I ever create a quilt that looked better crafted than a third-grade friendship bracelet? Anything I stitched together would dishonor rather than honor. Noble idea, but nothing I could execute. Alas, my plans remain pinned by a magnet to the filing cabinet in my office. Seeing his name makes me smile. I honor him, just more privately. Maybe that’s all he’d have wanted.
Every so often, I’d Google “Farrell Cahn” again, as if the greater passage of time would turn up some pre-Internet treasure. Sometimes I’d narrow the search, counterintuitively adding “Louisiana” or “Dallas” or “University of Dallas.” I had to do it. I had to feel like I was doing what I could to confirm the life of someone whose memory I seemed wholly responsible for holding. Maybe an obituary would provide closure. So that’s when he died. Maybe it would mention donating to an AIDS hospice. Maybe friends, family or even a longtime companion would be included. Would I reach out to his estranged sister a quarter of a century later?
After each fruitless Google, I was left with one frustrating conclusion: ordinary people whose entire lives were BGE (Before Google Era) disappear without a trace.
The only Farrell Cahn to be found on the worldwide web was a physician’s assistant in Burbank, California with a different first name but for whom Farrell was the middle name. But then a Facebook page came up for the University of Dallas.
My Farrell! Apparently, the one and only Farrell Cahn.
It took a fraction of a second to glimpse the picture, for it to register that it was a really bad photo and then to realize how precious it was. I burst into tears, an uncontrollable wail, something guttural surging from emotions I hadn’t fully processed over a quarter century. I was inconsolable, overwhelmed by grief, pain, sadness mixed with joy and relief. I found you, Farrell. I found something that goes beyond my personal memories of you. Twenty-first century, this is Farrell Cahn, an extraordinary ordinary man. Look at him bent over, looking up at an unseen photographer as he puts something in a trash bag.
The Facebook post was from April 29, 2021:
#fromthearchives Earth Day was last week. Did you help make our campus more beautiful? Farrell Cahn (BA ’80) definitely helped clean up campus in this picture from 1979. Follow in his footsteps and help make our campus a better place.
Farrell the activist? Farrell the environmentalist? Farrell the good guy. That’s something. That’s everything.
