A Belated Farewell

Last night, I dreamed about a childhood friend named John Contarino. We were walking towards his house and as we approached it, the house became what looked like, in retrospect, a sepulchre or crypt. There were white steps leading down to a rectangular pool about the dimensions of an average grave. Oddly, but then again it was a dream, John had been driving a car, a Volkswagon I think, and he parked it squarely on the stairs behind me after I had descended them.

I skirted the pool by walking on its concrete edges and to my right there a slightly open door with light spilling out. This was his house but I didn't look in and proceeded to emerge from the crypt and continue on my way. John was no longer with me but instead I realised that I was already late for school in my capacity as a teacher. I looked at my watch and saw that it was 8:45am and I had missed roll call that took place at 8:40am. The class that I needed to teach was already seated and waiting for me. I started to panic and try to wake myself up and eventually succeeded after my wife shook me.

On awakening, I felt that this dream might have been a premonition that he had passed away. After all, he would have turned 75 in December and he had been a heavy smoker. Later in the day, I checked out the funeral notices for Brisbane and discovered that he had died on August 8th 2013 at the age of 63. He had been born in December of 1949. I think it was on the 12th of the month but I'll have to check. Figure 1 shows the funeral notice.

Figure 1

It would be interesting if his final resting place at Nudgee Cemetary was a crypt. Given his Italian heritage, the family could well have had such a structure built. Why I should dream of him now, so many years later, I don't know. He's not someone that I remember having dreamed about for decades. As the notice says, he had two children, Gina and Salvatore. He was married in late 1993 or early 1994 and I attended his wedding in Brisbane with my then wife Sylvia. So it goes. That was the last time I ever had contact with him. I was living in Sydney at the time and this was before the Internet. In January 1996, Sylvia and I headed overseas.

John arrived at Marist Brothers Rosalie, where we both attended school, in Grade 5. This was way back in 1959. We became firm friends and would often walk back home together after school. He was a bright student and we both attended University together, although we both dropped out after a couple of years. He suffered a mental breakdown in his early twenties and remained on psychiatric medication thereafter, while I knew him, and probably for the rest of his life. There are so many memories that I have of him and I guess I'm still processing the news of his passing. We played innumerable games of chess together. We both trained for long distance running.