My Story

25 johnny dies

The person I wanted to help most in my life—Johnny Hyde—remained someone for whom I could do almost nothing. He needed something I didn’t have—love. And love is something you can’t invent, no matter how much you want to.

He would say to me, “What kind of a man do you think you will fall in love with someday?” And I’d answer I didn’t know. I would beg him not to think of any tomorrow but enjoy the life we were sharing together.

One evening in his home he started up the stairs to get me a book. I saw him stop on the landing and lean against the balustrade. I had seen my Aunt Ann do that a few months before she died of her heart attack.

I ran up to Johnny and put my arms around him and said, “Oh, Johnny, I’m sorry. I’m sorry you feel bad.”

“I’ll be all right,” he said.

A week later Johnny Hyde began asking me again to marry him. He had been to a doctor, and the doctor had told him he didn’t have long to live.

“I’m rich,” he said to me. “I have almost a million dollars. If you marry me you’ll inherit it when I die.”

I had dreamed of money and longed for it. But the million dollars that Johnny Hyde now offered me meant nothing.

“I’ll not leave you,” I told him. “I’ll never betray you. But I can’t marry you, Johnny. Because you’re going to get well. And sometime later I might fall in love.”

He smiled at me.

“I won’t get well,” he said. “And I want you to have my money when I’m gone.”

But I couldn’t say yes. He was right. He didn’t get well. A month later he went to the hospital. In the hospital he kept begging me to marry him, not for his sake anymore, but for mine. He wanted to think of me as never having any more hunger or poverty in my life.

But I still couldn’t marry him. Joe Schenck argued with me to do it.

“What have you got to lose?” he asked.

“Myself,” I said. “I’m only going to marry for one reason—love.”

He asked me, “Which would you rather marry—a poor boy you loved or a rich man you liked?”

“A poor boy I loved,” I said.

“I’m disappointed in you,” Mr. Schenck said. “I thought you were a smart girl.” But Mr. Schenck seemed to like me more after our talk.

Johnny Hyde died. His family wouldn’t let me sit among them at the funeral. I sat in the back of the church among Johnny’s acquaintances. When I passed by his coffin I felt such a sadness for Johnny Hyde that I forgot myself. I threw myself on the coffin and sobbed. I wished I was dead with him.

My great friend was buried. I was without his importance to fight for me and without his love to guide me. I cried for nights at a time. I never regretted the million dollars I had turned down. But I never stopped regretting Johnny Hyde—the kindest man in the world.