I can point to almost the exact spot on Concord Road in Weston, Mass. where, in 1955, my best friend told me devastating news. His message sent me into emotional shock that, for a time, changed the way I looked at my world.

David confided to me that he was about to leave the Jesuit community in which he and I had lived for the previous six years. We had both entered the novitiate on the same day─August 14, 1949─taking on the challenge of a life marked by austerity and separation from our families and from all worldly activities.

It did not take long for me to recognize David as the most stimulating young intellectual I had ever known. At age 19, he already displayed a dazzling range of knowledge, especially in literature and the arts. For our vow day, an event that marked our formal entrance into the Jesuit order, he wrote me a poem that showed both rare literary skill and spiritual insight.

Intellectual that he was, David also cared deeply about the spiritual life, and would make it his task to integrate the two spheres. In both, he strove passionately for  excellence.

During those years of early adulthood, I benefited from my friendship with David, learning from conversation with him about issues that arose from our studies and our contacts with visiting Jesuit scholars. Thanks in part to him, I enjoyed a vibrant intellectual life that balanced some of the austerity of our monastic existence.

With typical passion and lucidity, David detailed for me on that day in 1955          the reasons why he was leaving the Jesuit society. Chief among them was a conviction that he could not pursue the intellectual life under the burden of a narrow orthodoxy that had become the norm for American Jesuits at that time. He spoke of one of our Jesuit professors of English, a disappointed old man whose early promise had never matured. David dreaded finding himself in the same situation.

He never did. After he left the Jesuits, his scholarly career was brilliant, marked by excellence in both teaching and publication. He was also known to be a kind and generous colleague and mentor.

The great gift of his life was his family. A happy marriage, three children, and more recently two grandchildren, broadened his outlook and enriched his personality in ways that he would not have foreseen as a young man.

Last month, David died, a few months short of his 75th birthday. Death came to him in a hotel room in Lisbon where he and his wife were vacationing. At first, the news seemed unbelievable to me; I had visited him in Villanova only a few weeks before, at which time he seemed to have no notable physical problems.

Losing friends to death has become a significant part of my growing older. One after another they have died, classmates and others who I thought would be mourning me, rather than me them. With reluctance, I have learned to look death in the face as people who are dear to me leave this world.

As I stood before David’s body, just before his funeral, our 56-year history of friendship came flooding over me. In particular I gave thanks for that last visit in which we and our wives had rejoiced at coming together again. As usual, conversation with one another flowed fast, with David setting its pace.

Before leaving, I assured David that we would not allow a long time to elapse before getting together again. That was a promise death would not allow us to keep.

At his funeral, a eulogy was offered by one of his colleagues from the English department at the University of Pennsylvania. Admiringly, he applied to David what the poet Tennyson once wrote: “He wore all that weight of learning lightly.”

The colleague also recalled the electric quality of David’s conversation. A particular phrase, delivered rapidly, struck me and those others who knew him well as typical of the man: “You understand what I’m saying.”

We could all assent to the English professor’s conclusion: “Truly, we will not see the likes of David again.”

The Catholic funeral liturgy gave expression to the faith that my friend continues to live, in a transformation that we can imagine only with difficulty. For myself, I have never been able to believe that death brings a definitive end to human existence. Like that of every other human being whom I have known and loved, David’s life was too rich ever to cease entirely.

Seeing a friend dead continues to be a sobering experience, of course. But I do not consider it to be the end. The older I become, the more I want to believe in life ongoing beyond death. But just because I want to believe it does not make it untrue.

I am waiting and hoping to be surprised.

Richard Griffin