COVID-19 takes another

I should have just taken off May 18 because everything I touched that day turned to crap. Nothing went right and in the middle of the day when it was clear that the Titanic wasn’t going to rise up, shake off that pesky North Atlantic water and sail on to New York, I went to bed.

The afternoon before I reached for my phone to catch up on Facebook and saw my friend Ward Harkavy’s name. I smiled because here was another update on his progress at a rehab facility in New York.

Instead, I learned that he was dead from COVID-19.

I sobbed. Uncontrollably. The kind of crying where your whole body shakes and your breathing is thrown off to the point where you know if you don’t self-correct soon, that you will hyperventilate yourself in a sea of tears and snot.

My dear friend Ward was dead. He was 72 and leaves his brother and his family, Cooter, his cat, and many, many friends.

We met in 1985 when I went to work at The Arizona Republic as a reporter. He was an editor. He was the best editor I ever had. Not among the best. He was THE best in five newspapers and 26 years. When I moved to The Los Angeles Times as an editor, Ward was the person I called for advice. He was as opinionated as he was smart.

In Phoenix, we played racquetball at the Phoenix Y just about every day. I had hoped that his recent decision to give up smoking would slow him down but he managed to kick my butt regularly. Then we’d go to Mrs. White’s Golden Rule Café for chicken fried steak.

He had a wicked sense of humor. Pointing to his driveway about a month after he had stopped smoking (again), he noted how cigarette butts had been replaced with empty silver Nicorette packets.

When I mentioned that my cousin’s son was named Wardell, he adopted the name for himself, saying, “That’s the perfect name for a Jew from Bartlesville, Oklahoma.”

While in college at Kansas in the ‘60s, he said he tried to shop small by buying marijuana from the locals but, he said the quality was inferior: “You got emphysema before you got high.”

When I left Phoenix to head back to my East Coast roots, his love for the land came through as he mapped out my circuitous trip through our national parks and national forests. For those of you who have heard me recount for the 90th time the first time I saw the Rocky Mountains up close, blame Ward.

Shortly after Martin was diagnosed with Alzheimer’s, Ward came to visit. I warned him ahead of time what to expect and he replied, “I sure hope you don’t think I give a fuck?”—Ward’s favorite word.

Ward and Martin got along like a house on fire as it would be another year before Martin couldn’t communicate well.

Most nights Martin would retire early and Ward and I would stay up talking. We’d do shots and Ward would hurl f bombs at the disease that would eventually take my Martin. (The night Ward died I did a shot in his honor and hurled an f bomb or five at the disease that took him.)

“I notice you two say ‘I love you’ a lot,” Ward said one night.

“Yeah. First thing every morning, last thing every night and at the end of every phone call.”

“That’s fucking great.”

“Took me some getting used to but I like it,” I said.

We talked some more and I said, “You know I love you.”

Ward turned red.

“And you know you are going to say it back, right, because you love me, too.”

And so he said it and I said it again. We joked that we could die, knowing we said those three words to each other. I just never imagined that death would come so soon. Too soon.

Wardell, I will miss you.