“Death ends a life, but not a relationship.” This truth is both a psychological reality and a spiritual anchor. In the long autumn of life, one realizes that a meaningful friendship is as essential to our survival as oxygen is to our physical being.
Aristotle spoke of the highest form of friendship—one based not on utility or pleasure, but on virtue. It is the bond between two people who seek the good for the other’s sake.
For over seventy years, Edmund Reinhold Weise was that “other self” for me—my guardian angel in a white lab coat.
My journey with Ed began in the “golden hour” of the University of Virginia. I arrived in Charlottesville in January 1950, when “The University” was an undiscovered gem of fewer than 3,000 students.
I was an awkward “First Year” student. I arrived not with a formal letter of admission, but with a recommendation from my high school principal. Through the grace of Dean Ivy Lewis and Coach Bus Male, I became a “walk-on” with dreams of football stardom. I spent my nights on a cot at 504 Rugby Road—the Football House.
My dreams of gridiron glory were soon tempered by reality. But a different kind of destiny awaited me that first Sunday at University Baptist Church.
There, in the choir loft, I met Ed. The middle of three sons born to a German couple who escaped the shadow of Nazism, Ed was a fellow pre-med student. We sang together in a quartet, unaware then that we were beginning a lifelong harmony.
Ed was the prudent observer of my impulsive nature. One spring afternoon, the siren song of the Blue Ridge proved too much for me. Ed and I were lab instructors in biology, and I was tasked with heating agar media in Miller Hall.
Entranced by the weather, I left the Bunsen burners unattended and wandered up Observatory Mountain for a long stroll. I returned hours later to find Ed shaking his head.
“Bobby Brown,” he said, “you would never have gotten into medical school if I hadn’t been there to put out the fire.”
He had seen the black smoke from the street, ran into the building, and extinguished the mess of boiled-over agar. When our professor asked the next morning if the building smelled “unusual,” Ed looked him in the eye.
“Sir, it smells as usual to me,” he said. It was a noble lie—an act of grace that protected my future at his own risk.
His guardianship also extended to my academic survival. Entering UVa at midyear, I found myself “against the wall” regarding course sequences. I ended up in classes far beyond my ability, including the Philosophy of Alfred North Whitehead.
By exam time, I knew less than when I started. I decided to try the “magic” of an all-nighter. As Robert Louis Stevenson wrote in Travels with a Donkey, the night “passes lightly” in the open world, but under a roof, it becomes a dead weight.
By dawn, I fell into a deep, blissful sleep. Around 11:00 AM—two hours into my scheduled exam—Ed and his brother Reinhold quietly wandered into my room. They were scavenging my dresser drawers for razor blades.
I sat up, as dumbfounded as W.C. Fields. “What time is it?” I begged. Ed looked at me with concern: “I thought you had an exam today!”
Still dressed from the night before, I ran two miles to the classroom. It was empty. My panic worsened until a graduate student walked in. He listened to my saga without emotion, handed me the exam, and gave me one hour.
I earned a D, but it would have been a catastrophic F without those “dresser robbers” waking me.
Our quartet often performed “Never Grow Old” at church reunions. I recall the elderly audience out-singing our young quartet with such fervor that it seemed they believed the promise would disappear if the music stopped.
Decades later, that promise took on a jagged reality. Ed moved to Jacksonville to practice pediatrics. When his first wife was killed in a tragic accident, I called him.
Through his grief, he told me an angel had taken her “from his doorstep to the doorstep of the Heavenly Father.” In that hour, as we shared a rare laugh with his brother Reinhold, I realized our roles had shifted. The impulsive friend was now the witness to the guardian’s sorrow.
Today, a photo sits on my desk. Ed has his arm draped around my shoulder. He would have been 95 this year, just as I will blow out 95 candles this July.
Though he has passed, our relationship remains as vital as “spiritual oxygen.” In the quiet of my study, I know he is still there—putting out the fires of my doubt and calling me home when I wander too far.
Robert S. Brown, MD, PHD a retired Psychiatrist, Col (Ret) U.S. Army Medical Corps devoted the last decade of his career to treating soldiers at Fort Lee redeploying from combat. He was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Education at UVA. His renowned Mental Health course taught the value of exercise for a sound mind.
