4” 14’s / Masterpiece not very common so glad to hear you didn’t hesitate. I have -3 that looks identical to yours. Condolences on the loss of your dear friend.
Thank you sir! Consider this a place holder while I look for some pictures. His is a story that deserves telling.
Read it if you care to. Conjuring him made me want to tell the story.
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Johnny Wells we called him as kids. Four of us boys. He lived in town and was my oldest brother’s age. We two youngest, Luke and I, learned you didn’t trifle with our oldest brother’s best friend. We also learned his family had a genetic disease, Friedreich's Ataxia, an even uglier version of ALS. It would kill his mother, his little brother, Chris, who became my best friend in the 2nd Grade, and his two sisters. That was a death sentence for 50% of the six Wells kids.
Johnny was a tough kid who liked to hunt and fish, who learned to box from his dad, a trainer in his younger years. At about 5’4” we were all intrigued at Mr Wells fearlessness, especially after he broke the nose of a rowdy neighbor who was twice his size. John was a chip off the old block. He gave me my first ride on a Harley yeas later.
When I got out of the Marine Corps I followed John and Brother Matt to Idaho. Brother Mark had arrived just months before. We all three worked on the same construction crew pouring basements and building houses. They were good years with some rambunctious stories of their own, the ones you don’t tell grandkids about. We were quite the community of young men but Johnny was always Matt’s best friend and just a part of the family for the rest of us.
Fast forward 35 years or so and it was Johnny who found Brother Matt dead. And it was he and I heartbroken in the same kinda way. We adopted each other. The first time I ever saw his face crumble his stoic exterior is when he said “you’re my Brother now”.
We both started our houses around the same time. Me a cabin in the woods, him a beautiful home in town. He helped me pour the basement. I helped him frame his roof.
I was back and forth between Oklahoma and Idaho, but while up North, after I no longer slept nights in his basement, him cooking me breakfast, working days at the cabin, long after…when I arrived, first night was always with John and Connie. After that, we never failed to visit daily, at his project or at mine. Winters I tagged along Ice fishing as we both delayed the work till better weather.
I never had a friend I regarded as highly as I did John. Same age as Brother Matt, there was that same deferment. But like Matt, he always made me feel it was reciprocated.
On one of those mornings, over breakfast, when I first heard his palate collapse the first time, creating the same effect when his mother talked, I felt like I was being swallowed. My wife, Shelley and I talked furiously that night and before bed, we both couldn’t believe someone who’d escaped Friedreich's Ataxia was now gonna get handed a death sentence of Bulbar Onset ALS.
And so began what felt like the year of gratitude. You are horrified at what is to come but because of that, you cherish each moment knowing how blessed you are. You are so utterly grateful for every moment.
I saw John break down one more time. Not at knowing, but at ‘not knowing’, before diagnosis, after being deprived for weeks of sleep due to worry. I almost cried myself later in Seattle, in the Doctor’s office when John, by now sounding like he had a mouthful of marbles, angrily tell the doctor, “that’s my brother” when the doctor insisted I leave before he shared the official diagnosis. I remained in the room. I saw our Johnny Wells double his fist and strike his chest once before asking/telling the Doctor in his garbled speech “if I’m strong, can I beat this”. I knew the answer. He did too. But a man wants hope. He had to hear it. John was still a tough guy. He was Connie’s tough guy and my tough brother, coming to grips with this being a fight he’d not win.
From there on, in the months ahead, I saw Grace. Grace and humor. We wrote notes. His hearing being bad enough that I found myself answering in writing too half the time. We had some delicious moments of laughter. He lost weight and told us he was back to his Fighting Weight. Even took pictures and made a bib to hang around his neck to catch his drooling. Captured the Irony of ALS coming for someone who’d escaped the death sentence of the Ataxia.
He told me more than once in those months, always very solemnly, “I understand your Brother now”. I knew! He understood too much. And I did everything at the end to offer an alternative. Strategies involving hospice were nothing to a choking man. I knew, nothing was gonna dictate terms to John Robert Wells.
He had a favorite bench that made a picturesque setting under a favorite tree. Not dissimilar from his Best Friend’s favorite view. Shelley and I shared the anguish with Connie that last morning. I spoke another eulogy that meant every bit as much to me as my Brother’s eulogy. I’d known him since I was 7 years old. But for a dozen years he had been my brother.
So that is my remembrance of Johnny Bob, as his Mother would stammer. John Robert Wells, son of Bob Wells. A story I had to tell this morning. So much so that getting up for a potty break was itself something to rush through. Brother Matt’s best friend. A man who is well remembered!
