The passing of a close friend

Yesterday evening I learned that Adam, a very close friend of mine, had passed away unexpectedly.

I had last texted with Adam about a week ago, and we had been in touch fairly often since my move to Ireland. We had chatted about the usual stuff — TV series we were watching, our job/work situations food, relationships, weather. There wasn’t anything out of the ordinary. However, I feared for the worse when Adam’s friend Brian texted me saying he hadn’t heard from him in a few days. Both Adam and Brian were close friends who had moved to Portland, Oregon together three years ago. However they no longer lived together, and Adam had recently moved to a new place. As a result, Brian didn’t have Adam’s new address, but I was able to look it up online through Portland’s business portal since Adam had registered as a Lyft/Uber driver there. Brian and his boyfriend then went over to Adam’s house and found him in his bed already gone, so we don’t know exactly when he passed. I had been worrying about Adam’s health for awhile… he kept gaining more and more weight over the years, and he almost certainly had sleep apnea. Like many Americans, he did not have access to healthcare. I’m guessing his heart may have failed. He was 33.

Adam and I met in 2012 shortly after I had started working at UC Berkeley and when he had just relocated from the East to West coast. Over the last nine years, he became one of my best and loyal friends from my time San Francisco. I considered him part of my chosen family. Adam loved holidays, and we spent many Thanksgivings and Christmases together, cooking or going out for nice dinners. Although Adam moved to Portland, Oregon in 2018, we still saw each other at least twice a year. For the last few years we made a tradition of going to the House of Prime Rib (an old school classic restaurant in SF) on Christmas Eve when he was back visiting SF and staying at my house. The last time he visited SF was July 2020, before I had sold the house, and we did a road trip up the California coast and through wine country. Then in September right after I had moved out of the SF house and before I left for Ireland, I made a road trip up to Portland to decompress and spend a few days together with him.

It’s difficult to write anything more coherent at the moment, since it’s still sinking in that Adam is gone, but here are some of the many thoughts that have come to mind over the last 24 hours…

He was always up for adventures, going on road trips, trying out new restaurants. He had a passion for food, having trained professionally as a chef in college, and enjoyed sharing meals in the company of good friends.

He introduced me to other friends in SF, with whom we enjoyed game nights, Halloween parties, July 4th fireworks, and of course new restaurants. He especially enjoyed Asian cuisine — Mission Chinese, Mama Ji’s, Kingdom of Dumpling, State Bird Provisions, and the Bay Area’s many dim sum places. We enjoyed going to Tiki bars together, both in the Bay Area and Portland.

He had a tradition of watching “It’s A Wonderful Life” on Christmas Eve, after we had returned from our dinner out, and inevitably he would fall asleep on the couch.

We enjoyed going to spas for massages and saunas, including Archimedes Banya (Russian-style) and the Kabuki (Japanese-style) in SF, and others in Portland during my visits there.

We both loved “Tennis” — a retro sounding indie pop band formed by a young wife and husband team — and saw them in concert multiple times together. We also went to several stand-up comedy shows together, including Margaret Cho, Jerry Seinfeld, and Louis C.K. (before his MeToo scandal).

For his 30th birthday and as a send-off before he moved to Portland, I took him and a couple of our mutual friends to dinner at Atelier Crenn, the famed SF restaurant of French chef Dominique Crenn, who is currently the only female in the United States to attain three Michelin stars. It was an unforgettable experience.

Neither of us had much family left, so I think that’s one reason we became such close friends. He grew up in New Jersey, which I had gotten to know during my college years. One side of his family came from a Jewish-Polish background, which he embraced culturally (although not religiously), and he had been very close with his grandmother. Some of the traditions he grew up with in his family were similar to Russian ones that were familiar to me.

He was a loyal friend through my divorce and subsequent disappointments and heartbreaks.

He finally obtain a passport last year, and we talked about him visiting me in Ireland and us traveling to other places in Europe.

Thank you, Adam, for the many joyous and cherished memories we shared together. I will miss you terribly.