I miss him so

Letters Against Isolation has hit a rough patch. The portal -- where we all sign up to send letters to seniors -- has gone glitchy again. I started a new (and hopefully temporary) account and found that the there was an urgent need for correspondence in Spanish.

I used my remedial knowledge of the language, as well as a couple online translation sites, to create a pair of notes that began, "No hablo espanol a menudo, pero lo estoy practicando en esta nota amistosa para ti." (I don't speak Spanish often, but I'm practicing it on this friendly note to you.) Yeah, I know it's not poetry, but I'm sure my notes will be appreciated when received by lonely seniors in their Meals on Wheels deliveries.

It wasn't hard to do, but these notes did take longer and writing them was tedious. And it made me miss my friend Henry so much. I longed to call him, to blab with him a bit and then tell him to check his email so he could translate my LAI notes from Spanish to English for me.

He easily toggled back and forth between English and Spanish. He wasn't comfortable with his pronunciation in French and Italian but he could read and write in those languages, too. Languages were his natural talent and he enjoyed sharing it. For years he taught novels in their original romance language at the community college and tutored hotel and restaurant managers in Spanish to help them better communicate with their employees. After his accident in 2018, and until he left Key West last summer, he put tremendous care into translating the lesson into Spanish for the weekly church service. 

I am becoming accustomed to the fact that my friend is lost to me. But I will never stop missing him.