When I was twenty-two, my brilliant, sixteen year old brother decided that this world was just too much for him to bear. What was it that prompted him to end his life on that particular day, I’ll never know. Oh, I can surely imagine, but what it was that finally broke him? That will always remain a mystery.
In the months that followed his death, of a great comfort to us were a handful of his friends. It was the late 80s and his friends were of the “dare to be different” sort. They were bright, creative, beautiful kids and we relied far too much on them in our grief. They bore it well, but little by little, they ventured out into a world of their own making and one by one, we lost touch with them. Occasionally, I would hear news of one or another and I would send up a silent prayer that they were all happy, and that our tragedy hadn’t colored their entire lives and I would go on with my own.
About six months ago, I got an email from one who was particularly close to us. It came through Facebook and it said; “I don’t know if you’re the right person, but did you have a brother named Justin?” There was some other identifying information in the email, but I didn’t need it. I recognized his name right away and clicked through to his profile which showed a photograph of a man, (a man!), who was clearly the grown up version of my brother’s child-hood friend. We had some fun catching up, but didn’t really speak much of Justin, until he posted a photograph of the two of them together and people whose names I surely recognized started to post comments about how they’d never forgotten Justin and how he had shaped a lot of their lives. I visited the page with all the comments a time or ten, before deciding to post my own comment about how nice it was to see that people remembered my brother fondly. After so many years, it’s easy to imagine that you remember in solitude and clearly that was not the case here. I reconnected with a couple of the other “kids” and was happy to see that they’d grown into these terrific, smart people. It was nice to find commonality with some of them beyond the sharing of a loss more than two decades later. It was comforting somehow to see the families; their husbands and wives, their children, their careers, their interests, where they were in the world, but it was not without sadness, of thinking what Justin might have brought to this world. It was definitely bittersweet, but the sweetness was worth it.
This week, the boy who contacted me passed away. It was sudden and tragic and my heart is broken again. I didn’t realize just how much I cared for him, just how much he meant to me. I’m so grateful to have had the time to reconnect with him again and can only hope that somewhere he’s catching up with his old friend. My heart breaks for his mother, his sisters, his wife, his daughter. I know how hard it is to lose someone so close and I can’t help but remember the beginning of my journey with grief. I keep coming back though, to his friends. His friends who have been down this road before, they know tragedy, they lost one of their own all those years ago and now are enduring it again. I want to hug them all and tell them they’ll get through it. But they don’t need me for that, unfortunately they have already lived it once and now are enduring it again. Still, too young.
I have realized, yet again, how short life can be, how perilous our existence really is and how important it is to keep the bullshit at bay. I can’t seem to get Cat Stevens out of my head….
Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
Youre only dancing on this earth for a short while
And though your dreams may toss and turn you now
They will vanish away like your daddys best jeans
Denim blue fading up to the sky
And though you want them to last forever
You know they never will
You know they never will
And the patches make the goodbye harder still
Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
Therell never be a better chance to change your mind
And if you want this world to see a better day
Will you carry the words of love with you
Will you ride the great white bird into heaven
And though you want to last forever
You know you never will
You know you never will
And the goodbye makes the journey harder still
Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
Youre only dancing on this earth for a short while
Oh very young
What will you leave us this time
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