A Sad Loss

This is about the unexpected loss of someone I consider a dear friend, someone who has brightened my life for nearly 30 years.  Someone with whom I have never spoken, someone I have never met or even seen in person.  Someone I saw in a photograph for the first time yesterday when I found his obituary online.

His name was Jerry Kohl.  He lived in Seattle, Washington.  

This is how we met.  In the early 90s, I was working from my home office.  When I took a lunch break, I'd tune in TVO or, a bit later, the new Women's Television Network. They aired, every afternoon, what seemed like dozens of different British situation comedies.  They were a revelation.  I was hooked. 

Now if you're as old as me, you'll remember UseNet.  It existed before the World Wide Web became ubiquitous.  If you had internet connectivity you could find online discussion groups about whatever interested you.  I found one -- I think it was something like rec.arts.tv.uk. And I started posting questions and comments.  Jerry Kohl responded and, eventually we began corresponding by email about our mutual obsession.  We exchanged emails continually -- often every few days, more often every week or two -- since that time.  Nearly 30 years.

Jerry is the only person I have ever known who was as keen as I am about British television, especially britcoms.  The difference between us?  He had an encyclopedic knowledge of the actors, writers, producers and everything else associated with British broadcasting.  He would write fascinating emails about shows he and his wife were watching, what DVDs they were buying, what was being broadcast in the UK... even down to discussions on the various accents of actors.   It was an education and a delight.  He was the person who, when I whined about a $3 rental fee for every episode of Midsomer Murders from the local video rental shop, talked me through buying a Region 2 DVD player and ordering programs directly from Amazon UK or Network DVDs.  We tipped each other off to sales and, in our only non-virtual activity, swapped videotapes and later DVDs by mail.  

I always looked forward to his long, thoughtful emails which broadened my viewing and, inevitably, made me laugh.  He was slyly witty without ever being unkind.  He was a stickler -- as befits an academic -- for accuracy, once admonishing me that it is always Doctor Who, never Dr. Who.   Writing to him made me a better writer -- he was a published author so I polished my emails -- and a more constructively critical viewer.  

What is particularly hard now is that sharing my sadness is almost impossible; no one else important to me knew Jerry.  Oh, I am sure I have mentioned him many times over the years but that is very different than sharing sadness with someone who also feels the loss.  

This summer, when I hadn't heard from him for an unusually long while, I began to worry.  His last email -- July 2 -- was a long continuation of discussion on several topics we had been chatting about, from British soaps to an old black and white series about British spies escaping Vichy France.  I replied on July 6.  When I hadn't hear anything back, I sent along another email towards the end of July and then in mid-August and then late September.  I didn't want to be a pest if he was busy.  But he had only gone silent once before, when he had travelled to Germany for a few weeks to do final research for his latest book.  (Jerry was the leading world expert on the visionary composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. He was also an expert on early music and taught the recorder.) 

This is where the pandemic comes into it.  Since he had said he was not entirely working from home but going into the university a couple of times a week, I worried that he had fallen victim to the virus.  But I was in an information vacuum.  The thin thread that tied us together has always been the internet and I don't know anyone he knew, anyone to ask.  Finally, yesterday, not knowing what else to do, I searched his name through Google. 

And I found an article.  Coda:  Jerome Kohl.  

This is a blow for all of the usual reasons that it is painful and sad to lose someone who is an important part of your life.  But here's the other awful part.  

My relationship with Jerry was the only thing that had not changed in my life because of the pandemic.  From the way I visit with my family to how I socialize with friends to where I buy groceries to how I exercise - it's all been change, adapt, make do, do without.  But COVID-19 made no difference in this; my friendship with Jerry remained exactly the same as it had always been.  That alone made it a great comfort I am devastated to lose.

And because I can't mourn with others, I just need to say out loud "my friend Jerry in Seattle" -- that amazing person -- is gone from my life.