Bart was very shy at school, but in private, was a warm and caring boy. While we lived in Indiana, his mother, Barbara, was one of my mom’s best friends. I would often ride along with Mom when she visited Barbara. The two women would settle in at the kitchen table with their tea, clearly conveying that we were to make ourselves scarce. Bart and I would wander down to the family room to watch “The Three Stooges” or play Ping Pong. During one visit, he called me over to the corner of the room to show me the results of a cruel act his older brother, Todd, committed. Todd had dropped a straight pin into the goldfish bowl where it unluckily lodged in the eye of one of the occupants. The poor fellow continued to swim around the bowl seemingly unconcerned that it had been blinded and now must contend with this permanent fixture to its physiology. Bart made numerous attempts to capture the fish to remove the pin from its eye, but was not successful. “If I could just pull it out,” he reasoned, “but the booger keeps thrashing about and I’m afraid I’m making it worse.” Undoubtedly he was making it worse. The squirming slippery fish just could not be persuaded to hold still for any kind of operation. Despite the affliction, he blithely kept up appearances, and swam round and round, with his bloodied eye poked straight through with the pin.
The year we were twelve, Bart’s family decided to make a Christmas trip to Florida—a trip my family had made by car the previous two Decembers. Mom would arrange for my sister and me to be out of school an extra week each year in order to make the drive and still have a full week at our destination. Not interested in spending four nights on the road in hotels, the family of five Ulbrichs flew into the Ft. Myers airport the day school got out. We met up with them at their hotel on Sanibel Island the day after Christmas. Even though Bart and I knew each other well, and I now no longer had such a desperate crush on him, we were uncomfortable with each other at first. After a couple hours of agonizing silence, however, Bart asked, “Would you like to go out on the beach?” The grown-ups were paying no attention to us, my sister was happily playing with her toys, and Bart’s brothers had found other things to do. I agreed to go, and quickly changed into my two-piece bathing suit. The tide was going out, which meant the beach was populated with dozens of elderly shell seekers. Conch, coquina, oyster, muscle, and clam shells littered the beach for as far as the eye could see. Dotting the shoreline was the occasional Horseshoe Crab. Unable to live outside of the water, the strange looking creatures that washed up onto the shore seemed menacing. We soon realized that the only menacing thing about them was their most unpleasant odor.
Sanibel marketed itself as the “Shelling Capital of the World” and people from many different countries chose it as a destination in order to line their pockets with its bountiful sea treasures. Bart and I tripped our way through the waves splashing each other and slipping into the comfort of our childhood friendship. “Hey!” he suddenly exclaimed, his eyes bright with an idea. “Let’s see if we can get one of those coconuts out of the tree.” Far above our heads was a bunch held firmly to the underside of enormous palm fronds. The task was daunting as the breeze rustled through the greenery 30 feet above our heads. One tree, we observed, had a severe bend to it. Bart thought we might be able to gain a purchase and shimmy up far enough to grab hold and yank off one of the coveted “nuts,” he called them. “Coconuts are actually the largest seeds in the world,” I corrected him. He kindly ignored my officiousness. Bart stood beneath the arcing trunk of the coconut palm, his bushy head of hair impervious to the gusts of off-shore breezes, engineering our approach. “Okay, Deb, you come over here,” he instructed, “and grab hold of that palm frond that’s within reach.” I obeyed and tugged with all my might. I was able to make the trunk bend ever so slightly though I was literally a 90-pound weakling. In the meantime, Bart clambered up on the trunk and eased his way up. His weight further aided in my efforts. Before long, Bart, legs dangling on either side of the tree, was close enough to reach forward and place both hands on one of the heavily encased coconuts. At this point, with the weight of his body so close to the top of the tree and my weight pulling down on the fronds, Bart was only about eight feet from the sandy ground. He grasped the coconut firmly and slid off the trunk. With a fierce snap, the coconut came off in his hands, the trunk sprung free like a catapult, and Bart all but landed on top of me. We both spit sand from our mouths but rose triumphant, possessing our prize. We did a little coconut celebration dance (in the tribal tradition) and then got to work prying the fibrous outer layer away from the fruit that lay deep within.
Trying to get to the center of the coconut was hard work. Bart got the keys to their rental car from his dad and dug around in the trunk for a crowbar. We then positioned it on one side of the coconut and used the tire iron to hammer a slit into its side. We then pulled and tugged and pried until the pod released the sphere of the interior seed. We shook the softball size ball and heard the coconut milk splashing around inside. A little more digging around in the trunk of the rental car revealed a thick nail, which we then used to make two holes in the bristled shell—one to drink from, the other to allow air into the interior so that the milk would flow out. Bart and I sat on the hot sand, as the sun turned our skin a light pink, taking sips of the warm milky-colored liquid, quite satisfied with the taste of success. We then took the tire iron and gave the emptied coconut a good whack to get the sweet meat lining the inside. We broke off pieces bit by bit savoring each bite. When we had finished our feast, we both lay back on the sand and closed our eyes against the bright rays of the sun. “That was fun,” Bart sighed. “Yes,” I agreed, nodding my head.
Fourteen years later, my mother’s close friendship with Barbara long in the past having been separated by my parents’ move to Florida and the Ulbrichs’ move to New Jersey, I sat outside my own home in Connecticut at a newly purchased picnic table. My six-month-old daughter slept soundly in her stroller next to me. The sun was warm on my back as I read through, for the tenth time, the obituary, now over a year old, that Mom sent me. “Memorial services for Bart Ulbrich, 26, will be held . . .” My mind kept going back to the telephone conversation just a few days earlier when Mom had first broken the news to me shortly after she received a letter with the clipping from another friend. “Todd found him,” she told me. “The note Bart left said, ‘The best part of my life is over.’” I couldn’t quite wrap my mind around this revelation. As I watched my sleeping baby whose life was just beginning, I could see the movie memory of the blinded goldfish and the great coconut adventure play through my mind. I silently mourned the passing of my first crush . . . a friend and dear boy.
Author’s note—Bart committed suicide on January 24, 1985. He, as well as friends Alex Armour, Leslie Smith, and Leslie Knoll will always have a special place in my memories. It is with them in mind that I encourage anyone who is suffering from depression to seek help and to remember that if you are contemplating ending your life, please call the National Suicide Hotline. More information can be found at http://suicidehotlines.com/national.html.
