Quiet Hero

I’ve always found it peculiar (and somewhat annoying) that I can forget where I sat my keys down 15 seconds ago, yet dates and events permanently hard code in my brain. Sometimes I wish these things were as easily scrambled into the noise of life and living too.

Thanks to this trait, the arrival of April is always tinged with melancholy for me. This Sunday, April 2nd, marks 18 years that my dearest friend from my teens has been gone. I remember Mom calling me at college and giving me the news. He had died in a fire trying to save someone thought to be still inside the building. He wasn’t a fireman or EMT – it was just the kind of person he was. Selfless and inherently heroic without meaning to be. The cruel irony was, no one was inside - he succumbed to smoke inhalation, searching for someone who’d already made it out.

I received the call just before art history class. Finals were approaching and I couldn’t really afford to skip class, as it was difficult to recuperate slide lecture notes. I can’t remember a single thing from that lecture. I do remember being thankful that the lights were off, so I could allow the tears to roll down my face with little notice as I struggled with digesting the shock and making sense of this blindsiding loss of my friend.

We met at youth camp several years before and in the seasons following built a bloodlike bond. Through celebrations, family issues, big breakups and the standard myriad of second decade milestones, we always had each other’s back - laughed and cried together, and confided in each other in total trust. We were family. I think back on those times and the roots of our friendship and smile wryly at the complicated simplicity of our lives. The drama of teen angst is by no means trivial at the time, but hindsight reveals how young and tender we were – still yet untouched by so many of the tragedies of life – and of losing things so valuable.

He was uncommonly kind and compassionate, and I’d never heard him speak ill toward anyone. I wonder if the storms of life would have further honed and refined this natural grace in him, or if he’d sour and scar as I did. So many times I’ve wondered what sort of man he’d have become. He had a gift for music and a heart for God – I could see him in a music ministry of some sort, possibly in the very church his younger brother now pastors, not far from my home. I know he and my husband would be good friends – they’d have enjoyed each other’s company greatly. He’d most certainly be married and have a yard full of kids, no doubt coaching their little league teams and heading up their scout troops and Sunday school classes. Though oblivious to any difference, the lives he would have touched are paler in his absence. Of that I’m sure.

The Lord has His reasons for His timing. I always remember that, even though I don’t understand it sometimes. Each year these memories revisit, and I wonder. It just seems my friend should have lived a long, enriching life – much longer than 20 years.