Far, Far Away

Posted at 11:30 PM, Saturday, February 23, 2008

It has been a very busy and fun weekend. The progressive Jewish youth group Netzer sent us five youth workers, who led a rousing Friday evening service and then took us through a terrific quiz night following dinner. I took the boys to our first show of the Adelaide Fringe--a clown comedy called "Ready, Steady, Clown," apparently inspired by the wildly popular TV cooking show "Ready, Steady, Cook." In the background, the V8 cars of the Clipsal 500 roar, along with the occasional sounds of a supersonic jet overhead as part of the show. Tomorrow, we are looking forward to seeing how the youth workers direct our Sunday school program, I get to enjoy the 95th birthday celebration of a beloved member of the Adelaide Jewish community, and Yonatan will be attending the birthday party of a classmate who is returning to Israel in just another week.

11,000 miles away, Panayotis Lambrakopoulos died on Thursday. Panayotis and I graduated from high school together, but I had known him since fourth grade. He was a big bear of a man, full of warmth and enthusiasm for life. He was also a consummate intellectual. He and I served on the staff of our high school literary magazine for four years under the capable sponsorship of his older sister Evanthia, who happened to be my favorite high school teacher. I saw Panayotis for the first time in two decades at our high school reunion in 2003 and failed to stay in touch after that.

Thanks to modern technology, I've been kept up-to-date on Panayotis' dire condition ever since he himself posted a note several weeks back briefly outlining six months of bad medical news. He had been treated for lymphoma in his twenties, and it seems the radiation treatment had weakened his heart to the point that it started to give out. Had I been within several hundred miles, I would almost certainly have tried to visit. Instead, I sent e-mail messages and left one voicemail message which I can only hope he received. And I added him to our synagogue prayer list in the hope that it might help him turn the corner.

After 18 months in Australia, we are just about settled into the pattern of life here, although there are still occasional unpleasant surprises. It is only rarely that I get such an acute reminder of how far away we are. When we were gearing up for our move, a dear friend complained, "I'll never get to see you!" "But we never see you now!" I protested. "Yes," she said, "But we could if we wanted to." Living in Australia means that phone calls, e-mail, and photographs are easy, but face-to-face contact requires months of planning and the extravagant expenditure of money. My sister is not sure when she will visit with her family, but she's already been planning her trip for a year or so. If you're going to spend US$6000 or more just for four plane tickets, you want to be sure you get it right.

It seems absurdly self-indulgent of me to write this entry about my experience of Panayotis' death. In these last few weeks, I've been constantly grateful to Jacqueline Dupree, who volunteered back in 2003 to run our class website and has stuck with the job ever since. The website has sprung to life, as classmates post tributes and discuss the possibility of a class gift. It may be true, as many have said, that a virtual community is actually no community at all. But when you're 11,000 miles away, even the virtual community is pretty comforting.