I've never been so happy to see a Monday.
The first week of August has become a mindfuck roller coaster in recent years. There are more birthdays and anniversaries than should be crammed into a seven day stretch. This week has become as reflective as it is celebratory. Even my dog had a birthday--she's 15 now. As heartbreaking as it is amazing. And on August 6, it was one year ago that my wife and I lost a friend to cancer. Just a month out from our wedding and on my bachelorette party weekend, we sat at the funeral of a 36 year old who only weeks before had been planning his party wardrobe. But this is still too fresh to eat at me--time has moved so fast it's as if I haven't had the time to process it, like I haven't been able to put our story in the right order. So it's someone else that I haven't been able to stop thinking about lately.
He was boyish and pure and kind. He laughed easy, he smiled big, and turned a little pink every time he did. I saw him angry once in almost 10 years. He was actually good. He rarely drank, so I would make him mocktails with bitters and cucumber slices. We would talk about life and women and the way the world worked. One night we went for a long drive after dinner so he could tell me something important, something he hadn't told anyone and had only vaguely hinted at with his family. He was nervous and couldn't find his words. I just knew he was finally going to come out. Instead he told me he was forgoing a military career after college to become a priest. His family, though Catholic, didn't support it. So I did.
But it didn't stop me months later--on Halloween--from taking him to a house party and then to a member's only after hours bar. We drank. We celebrated. We got separated. The next day we met for lunch to see with our own eyes that the other had made it out alive and in one piece.
"Last night was crazy," I told him, " I took a boy home."
"Me too," he said.
So that was that. The priesthood was out, but he wasn't just yet.
He enlisted as an officer in the Army. And did three tours in Iraq. We emailed through every one of them so I would know he was OK. When I would realize the weeks had passed a little faster than usual and I hadn't heard from him in a reasonable amount of time, I listened for his name on the news, looked for his name in the paper.
But he came home. Just as I was leaving for another state and he was a about to be stationed in Kansas for a while we met face to face for the first time in years. He wasn't boyish anymore. He was a man now--broad, brow furrowed. His laugh was still easy but there was a weight in his face. No pink in his cheeks. We drank a few rounds, he told some stories, talked about how he wasn't sure if he could sleep in a clean bed, and how he wasn't sure what to do without sand in his boots. And then we went on our way with calls and texts and emails...
In July 2012 I moved back home. He called me when he heard the news and told me he was heading to Korea the next day. He would be there for six months, and after would be coming home too. He had requested to be stationed here. He was ready to be back with his family and friends, someplace he could be himself.
Three weeks after that conversation, he was crossing the street and was hit by a bus. After surviving three tours in Iraq, he was dragged through a busy city street in Seoul, Korea and died. The papers said he was with a male friend.
There was no sand in his boots, no fleas in his bed. No reason why.
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