Wednesday, November 03, 2004
Stability
"Picture something beautiful," Matt told me last night, gently brushing the tears off my eyes, drying them with his hands. It felt like guided meditation. His words brought me to a picture of a memory. The pier at summer camp across the periodically calm and choppy life water Vaughn Bay. The way the sunset looked across the purple dreamlike mountaintops in the distance.
Campfire the last night at camp. The pictures I took as I cried for the end of the much-anticipated, life-changing summer.
Matt talked to me, my eyes closed. He first brought me alone on a bench in my head overlooking the water. Then he brought in Ben Gibbard to sing my favorite songs in my ear.
I giggled a little at this, but suddenly, all at once, I could only cry harder.
I cried for the loss of our friend Dan. I cried for him like I am crying now, listening to the calming percussion and ghostlike vocals of the Stability EP, and wondering what stability is. If it exists at all.
For three years Dan has been my friend. Our friend, that is, especially those of us who became so close living in the dorms. Since that fall semester when I met Jeff. The time with all the parties and the laughter. When people I would grow to love barely knew me and carried my drunk ass to the car on my 21st birthday.
Dan loved drinking. But what he really loved to do was make sure everyone else was drunk. He'd wait until you'd had more than you needed to drink, and then he would order you a Long Island Iced Tea while you weren't looking.
Dan was Jewish, and he would tell all these terribly offensive yet horribly funny jokes about Jews and Jesus. We went through them all last night. Every last one we could remember. Filled the room with voices. Raised our glasses and liquor bottles to his memory.
"Dan wouldn't want us to all be sitting here crying like this," someone would say.
It's true. I'll always remember Dan with a smile on his face.
It's just that I feel so guilty. I feel so lucky to have known him. We all do. Many of us gathered last night. And many of us gathered tonight to miss him together.
We don't know how he died yet. It was very sudden. We just know he didn't go to any Halloween parties Saturday. And he was found in his apartment yesterday.
OK, I really want to stop writing now, and there just doesn't seem to be an appropriate way to end this, but maybe it's just as well, because I don't suppose the death of my friend at 21 years old was an appropriate ending either.
I loved him, though. I can say that. He was one of the kindest, most generous persons I have ever met. And intelligent. And he was humble in every way. In a quiet way.
And if I never learn anything about the meaning of life ever, I'm going to try to my damnedest to take a lesson from Dan.
Sometimes you don't have to do anything at all other than exist to make an impression on those who love you.
Dan was closer to graduating college than the snow is from hitting the Chicago skyscrapers this Christmas. He didn't get to have his graduation. He doesn't get to go on to graduate school or get married. He didn't cure any diseases. But he lead an extraordinary life through the friends he made. And through his religion and his love for his family.
We will mourn for him Sunday. We will miss him forever.
"Picture something beautiful," Matt told me last night, gently brushing the tears off my eyes, drying them with his hands. It felt like guided meditation. His words brought me to a picture of a memory. The pier at summer camp across the periodically calm and choppy life water Vaughn Bay. The way the sunset looked across the purple dreamlike mountaintops in the distance.
Campfire the last night at camp. The pictures I took as I cried for the end of the much-anticipated, life-changing summer.
Matt talked to me, my eyes closed. He first brought me alone on a bench in my head overlooking the water. Then he brought in Ben Gibbard to sing my favorite songs in my ear.
I giggled a little at this, but suddenly, all at once, I could only cry harder.
I cried for the loss of our friend Dan. I cried for him like I am crying now, listening to the calming percussion and ghostlike vocals of the Stability EP, and wondering what stability is. If it exists at all.
For three years Dan has been my friend. Our friend, that is, especially those of us who became so close living in the dorms. Since that fall semester when I met Jeff. The time with all the parties and the laughter. When people I would grow to love barely knew me and carried my drunk ass to the car on my 21st birthday.
Dan loved drinking. But what he really loved to do was make sure everyone else was drunk. He'd wait until you'd had more than you needed to drink, and then he would order you a Long Island Iced Tea while you weren't looking.
Dan was Jewish, and he would tell all these terribly offensive yet horribly funny jokes about Jews and Jesus. We went through them all last night. Every last one we could remember. Filled the room with voices. Raised our glasses and liquor bottles to his memory.
"Dan wouldn't want us to all be sitting here crying like this," someone would say.
It's true. I'll always remember Dan with a smile on his face.
It's just that I feel so guilty. I feel so lucky to have known him. We all do. Many of us gathered last night. And many of us gathered tonight to miss him together.
We don't know how he died yet. It was very sudden. We just know he didn't go to any Halloween parties Saturday. And he was found in his apartment yesterday.
OK, I really want to stop writing now, and there just doesn't seem to be an appropriate way to end this, but maybe it's just as well, because I don't suppose the death of my friend at 21 years old was an appropriate ending either.
I loved him, though. I can say that. He was one of the kindest, most generous persons I have ever met. And intelligent. And he was humble in every way. In a quiet way.
And if I never learn anything about the meaning of life ever, I'm going to try to my damnedest to take a lesson from Dan.
Sometimes you don't have to do anything at all other than exist to make an impression on those who love you.
Dan was closer to graduating college than the snow is from hitting the Chicago skyscrapers this Christmas. He didn't get to have his graduation. He doesn't get to go on to graduate school or get married. He didn't cure any diseases. But he lead an extraordinary life through the friends he made. And through his religion and his love for his family.
We will mourn for him Sunday. We will miss him forever.
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