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| Author's Note: I used real names in this essay. I apologize to anyone this might offend, for I have only the utmost affection and respect for all the people I wrote about in this paper. | |
| 1 | I was late for school that day. I was late, but not feeling particularly bad about it. I had slept in and my parents had already gone, leaving me to find my own way to school, which was, inevitably, the city bus. The idea of just not going to school crossed my mind that morning, but it was Friday, the best day of the week, and not going would be wasteful. Besides, the lunch of the day was pizza at the school cafeteria. |
| 2 | Waiting for the bus to come, I calculated that I would be just about an hour late to school. I would miss Band class, so I didn't bother to bring the trumpet with me. Now, my mind may have gotten confused with the events happening later that day, but it seems to me as I write this that I thought of Ryan that morning. Just a passing thought, perhaps, to the effect that I planned to sit at his table that day, or ask him to sit with us, or something of the like. What I may have been going to tell him or ask him is now lost to my mind. It wasn't anything important. The bus came on time, miraculously. |
| 3 | It was October 16th, a week or so after my 17th birthday. The sky was low and gray, but it was dry; the rain would probably come later, and it was the time before the rain that I enjoyed most. There is something very expectant and exciting about a gathering storm. So, despite the fact that I was going to be late to school, and my parents were mad at me for oversleeping, the day did not seem like a bad one. It was, after all, bracketed by two welcome events: the sword I had ordered from Museum Replicas had come on the 13th (I had eagerly torn open the package, beholding with joy the shining power of it, then promptly brought it to school on the 15th), and my birthday party was tomorrow. I was sure I could overlook today's less-than-ideal beginning and enjoy the rest of it. |
| 4 | Then, as I was walking down the road from the bus stop to school, I heard my name. Or perhaps I saw and heard it spoken at the same time. I don't remember. A small car slowed next to me and the faces of Christina and Kristin looked out at me. I do remember thinking that odd for a couple of reasons; one, those two weren't the kind I'd picture hanging out with each other a whole lot, even though our entire class was pretty friendly, and two, they were out driving the streets on a school morning. Christina's explanation didn't clarify anything a whole lot. "We were looking for Natalie," she said, "have you seen her?" I admitted no, as I got into the car. Perhaps it is just my biased memory, but the storm clouds seemed darker that second. |
| 5 | "Did you hear?" Christina's face was as I'd never seen it before "Ryan committed suicide last night." |
| 6 | I don't remember what shock felt like. I could shroud it in clichés, making it familiar with tired, overused words, but the truth is, I can't remember the feeling at all. It isn't explainable in phrases; they make it unreal. I said something, I think it was "Jesus Christ," and I am not sure if I was swearing or not. I don't remember what else I said during that seconds-long car ride; I think Christina and Kristin were talking. The principal had announced it on the PA system that morning. School was basically called off. Everyone was just standing around, not knowing what to do. |
| 7 | I saw that this was true when we pulled into the parking lot. I thanked the girls for the ride as I hauled my stuff out of the back seat. What I felt like at that point, I don't know. I saw a small group of my other friends standing around, and Michelle told me she had tried to call me at home. Must have been while I was on the bus. |
| 8 | "How?" I asked. What a stupid question. Why did it matter! But in some perverse way, it did, very much. |
| 9 | "With a gun," someone explained. Some of them were already crying. Tears sprang to my eyes, too, but I honestly can't remember if they were for Ryan, or simply because everyone else was crying. |
| 10 | I remember taking inventory of my friends, as though it were the aftermath of a battle, and I had to be sure of who was alive, who was functioning, and where they were. It was imperative to find Jen, Julia, Megan, Travis...others must have thought I was insane. They humored me; helped me find those Missing in Action, until I was satisfied that I was not spinning around out of control in a hazy world. It was the world that was out of control. |
| 11 | He was giving a group of us a ride home. Or to the bus stop. I can't remember; he did us this favor a lot. We had been out at Zuka Juice or some such place, and now were heading off once more from the school parking lot after dropping someone off. I don't remember how the subject came up, but it did; we talked of suicide. "Don't you dare," we all told him, and each other. Jen said: "You have to promise me something. You have to promise me you'll call me first." We all made him promise, and he agreed, making us in turn promise the same thing. We did, of course. |
| 12 | Well, I never got one damn phone call. |
| 13 | I hate crying. I hate it with a passion, and of course the worst thing I could think of was crying in public. That day, however, I did. I made it as far as the school chapel, and I realized I was trapped. Nothing I did or said or screamed or pleaded for could change what had happened. If I ran, if I cried, if I begged God not to let this be happening, Ryan was still dead. Suddenly, there were a hundred urgent things I had to tell him, and promises I had to make. He would not come walking in the door, he would not hear them. I practically laid down on the floor of the chapel, facing the crucifix, but I did not feel the presence of God. Someone, Mr. V--, possibly, put a hand on my back as if for comfort but I felt the hand pushing me farther and farther into the floor, down into darkness, pushing the air out of me until I could no longer move, that sympathy crushing me into the blood-colored carpet. |
| 14 | How was it, the night of October 15th? My mind supplied an image: dark. A dark room, with all the shadows of death and life crowding around like the chorus of Oedipus the King. Watching, and waiting for Oedipus to blind himself, for the boy in the center of the darkness to pull the trigger, the cold, indifferent muzzle of the gun nestled against his head. He is alone. Perhaps not in the house, but alone as I have been, in the soul. With the eyes of the soul, he must only see a vast, empty world, tones of gray and black, or any other color, devoid of life or purpose, chasing itself down the drain. I have seen that, too, or thought I had. I never had a gun. My mind tries to show me what happens next but I scream. |
| 15 | Ryan had this thing about cleanliness. It bordered on an obsession, but it was mild enough not to make him freakish. The gum which other, careless students stuck under the lip of the desk absolutely horrified him. I had to agree. To be gripping the desk and suddenly find one's fingers wading through tepid, germ-infested marshes of semi-hardened gum had to be one of the world's least favorable experiences. The two of us, and I suppose others with whom he brought up the subject, could expound for quite a while on what lethal organisms might reside in such sticky messes, and how those barbaric people who left them should be flayed. He had such a lively manner of speaking, of rattling off ideas and words and sentences, most of which escalated into the truly, wonderfully bizarre, that I never got tired of talking to him. |
| 16 | He had elaborate plans for annoying the flight attendants when he took his trip to Massachusetts for a college visit. This involved drawing a face on each individual finger of both hands, and speaking to the flight attendant through these, his argumentative translators. Two or three fingers would decide firmly that he wanted orange juice, while the other fingers on that hand would strongly disagree, thus bringing about a terrific argument of fingers. The other hand, meanwhile, would be utterly oblivious and singing Christmas carols. When we perfected this scenario, he naturally had to act it out there in the back of the German classroom, and I nearly fell off my seat. |
| 17 | In the darkness of the chapel, I could see Megan crying in a corner. She had been very good friends with Ryan. Many people had known him longer and better than I, but he seemed to be a natural at being friends. He was brilliant and funny, and as given to strange ideas and mild insanities as I was myself. He was going to teach me magic, and help me learn to play the bagpipes. |
| 18 | BJ, another close friend of Ryan's, had a plastic sack. Yesterday, I remembered seeing it beside Ryan's desk in English class. It held masses of glow-sticks, the kind you snap and then they glow for hours. Now BJ finished handing them out to everyone, a strangely tangible touch of Ryan that would be our last. He had loved glow sticks because he hated the dark. |
| 19 | Those little plastic glow-sticks have become an emblem of him, almost like the cross is of Christ. Even now, a year from that day, it is the closest tangible thing to remind us all of our friend. I went back to my high school a few days ago, on the 15th, and I met Isaac. We talked a bit and then I said, "It's October 15th." He nodded and opened his sleeve. A tiny yellow glow-stick rolled out. |
| 20 | That day, I wanted to go home. Deborah took me, and then I thought I should have stayed. I didn't know what I wanted. I wanted none of this to have happened. I wanted the phone to ring and Ryan's voice to ask me if I wanted to go to Mount Hood with him at 3 o'clock in the morning. I swear now I would have gone, had he asked. |
| 21 | What should I have said, and what should I have done? I remember that Thursday, the day he did it, that I asked him to come to the office with me and see my sword. (Like a proud parent I had brought it to show off). I asked him that at lunch time, while he stood in the line. He had something to do during lunch hour, he told me, so I asked him would he come by and see it after school? |
| 22 | "I have to leave right away. Maybe some other time." |
| 23 | "OK," I called back cheerfully. I was so convinced that nothing would ever change, that the burdens that life would load upon me were somewhere in the distant future. Maybe some other time. It sounded good to me. |
| 24 | I should have stopped, should have asked, demanded to know…what? At that time it would have seemed that there was nothing to ask about, that everything was okay, that he really did have some sort of important errand to run after school. But I don't let myself off the hook. Somehow I should have just known. |
| 25 | That day in the chapel, I asked the priest a childish question, a question born of my own unstable faith in the teachings of the church, in God himself. |
| 26 | "Is he in Heaven, do you think?" I was still crouched on the floor. Maybe it had been the priest's hand on my back. As he looked at me, I challenged him, in my mind. I knew what the Church thought about suicide. Don't you dare tell me no, I thought. I was terrified that he would, that God's mouthpiece on earth would proclaim Ryan a sinner and his soul lost forever. I dreaded even more the gentle way in which he might say it. He didn't tell me no. He told me that God judged according to each person and his individual life. I should have felt better, and perhaps I did for a while, for I was conditioned to trust priests, even though I had disagreed with many before. But I wondered. Even dead, Ryan seemed more real to me than God. He hadn't believed he was going to heaven when he died; he hadn't believed he was going anywhere. What had he found out, last night? Was he hoping to be proven wrong, or was he looking forward to eternal darkness and oblivion? And, at that last instant, as the bullet snuffed out his life, was he afraid? |
| 27 | Such thoughts terrified my soul. |
| 28 | I hate funerals. The silence of the coffin seems to bluntly deny our belief in God, rather than help us know that our loved one is on his or her way to a better place. It sits there, almost mocking the words of the priest as he prays the soul of the deceased into the arms of Heaven. What a joke, it says. Do I look like eternal life to you? Here is where if all ends, not at some pearly gate, but in a wood box. That's all you've got. At Ryan's funeral, I ignored it. I tried not to think about what was or wasn't beyond death, just as I tried not to think about the tuft of his hair I could just barely see over the edge of the open casket. |
| 29 | The organ was droning some God-forsaken hymn. Those falsely mournful tones were maddeningly cliché. Somebody's dead, ho hum. It wasn't somebody, it was Ryan. I wanted the music to echo the horror I felt. I made a mental note to refuse to allow any organ-playing at my funeral, as I stared hard at the ceiling to contain my tears. This was awful. The flowers were gaudily abundant, I thought, but if there had been none, I would have hated that, too. Out in the lobby, Ryan's papers and pictures were on display. He had done chemical research about bioluminescence for a university, and those reports were there. Also there was his bagpiper's uniform and pipes. In here, in the Seventh Day Adventist Church, Ryan was finally truly dead in my mind. |
| 30 | I disliked the minister almost from the moment he opened his mouth. He went on and on about the evils of the world, and how the devil had entered Ryan and made him do it. What a bunch of crap, I thought, glaring at him. It was probably jerks like you who made him do it. No wonder Ryan hadn't thought much of religion, if this was his experience. I wondered how the man could honestly think that Satan had anything to do with this, when he had known Ryan since he was a tiny kid. I wondered if he knew about my friend's interest in magic, or his homosexuality. If these things constituted Satan to him, he must live in a world fraught with tangible danger at every turn. |
| 31 | I lost it when the piper played "Amazing Grace." Another cliché song, but played on the bagpipe it meant more to me than the sermon and the organ music put together. The piper was Ryan's own instructor. He stood perfectly still, only his tassels and kilt swaying, and filled the whole meaningless church with the throb of his mournful instrument. This was a goodbye I understood. |
| 32 | I had never gotten the chance to say goodbye to Ryan. I found out later that he had, in effect, said his farewells to others, in ways they hadn't understood. The last exchange I ever had with him was that promise in the lunch room that he'd see my sword some other time. Was I not important enough that he wanted to say goodbye to me? I guessed not. I cried "goodbye" over and over at night, when the glow-stick was the only thing lighting my dark room. I didn't feel anything. Not a "presence", not a "warmth." Nothing. |
| 33 | Maybe he'd forgotten those days we went to Dairy Queen together, or to downtown Oregon City when he had trekked with us down to the river, or when he had to park his car in the middle of the street because the two of us were laughing so hard over another one of his scenarios. |
| 34 | I was angry at him for taking himself away when we were just starting to be friends. I was angry at him for not thinking of any of us, not even Jen, who had had this happen to her before, twice. But I don't know what he was thinking, and I never will. I also don't know if I will ever fully forgive him, because I'm a mean, bitter person and I know it. |
| 35 | He wanted people to be happy. We could almost picture him, at the funeral, telling everyone not to be sad, even in the face of his death. But it was only imagining, and it only ever will be. I think that no one who dies is ever truly remembered correctly, because he has ceased to be, and we can only remember the things he did and try to apply them to situations in our continuing lives. I can guess what Ryan would have said at his funeral but I won't ever know for sure because he wasn't there. Or maybe he was, and maybe he did knock over those flowers, trying to get us to laugh, which we did, because it was just like something he would do. |
| 36 | I believe that more and more now, even as the sharpness of those memories fade. |
| 37 | I had a dream; I don't remember how long ago. In it, I was at school, and he was sitting in the middle of the hall, with books open before him. I seemed, in the dream, utterly unsurprised to see him. We talked a little bit, and he asked me a question about his math homework, which was ridiculous, since he was a genius at that sort of thing, and I, to put it kindly, was not. In the dream, I answered him, and he said thanks. We smiled, and I turned to leave through the courtyard door. Before I opened it, he looked up and said, simply, in a friendly tone, |
| 38 | "Goodbye." |
| 39 | I smiled, as I went through the door. |
| 40 | "Goodbye, Ryan."
Nominated by Sue Mach, Writing Instructor
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