The Four Deaths That Have Screwed Me Up a Little

I had no business playing baseball. Or any sport for that matter. But at the time, playing in the local baseball league was all but a right of passage for any young boy within the area. Our teams were named after local sponsors and I believe I was on team "Busey Bank". My pride likes to say that I was a decent outfielder but the pure primal terror of having a fastball come inches from my face, and that me, embracing that human instinct, might want to avoid said hard ball hitting me in the face, relegated me to the bottom of the lineup. Next to me in the lineup was Adam. We were both kind of dorks and were just doing baseball for the sake of doing what was expected of young boys at the time. For almost twenty years ago I can't quite remember what we spoke about. Probably just small take twelve year olds do. I remember talking with Adam about various snark about the baseball game, our lives, and about whatever the game was going to hold for our standings for the little league tournament. By God, we might get our names in the paper for the random line drive or the lucky pop up that an unfortunate center fielder manage to drop. We might actually have a batting average!

At the age of twelve. Adam's name got in the paper for a different reason. His mother was extremely mentally ill. Adam's Mom went catatonic one day and stabbed him to death. Adam's little brother was also attacked but managed to survive. It took me a while to realize that the boy who was murdered by his mother also happened to be my old teammate who I sat next to for that season. I was my first experience with death. I knew that it would come for all of us. But I always considered that it came when all of your business was done. You've shaken the hands you've needed to, made the kisses you've needed to, you've closed the book and on to the next thing, the afterlife, at a ripe old age. Instead I learned that one moment you might be arranging your Pokemon team and the next you might be unlucky enough to have somebody you love snap and stab you to death.

Death is weird. It is something so far out of our control, yet it something that can drop into our lives at a blink of an eye.

My Grandfather's first name was Robert. But,  At the respect of his family name, I will call him Mike. Or at he was known to me, Grandpa Mike. Mike was drafted out college during the Korean War. He served as a radio operator, but more specifically, his job was to spot North Korean/Chinese  movements and call out spots for artillery to attack. At one point during the war, a rouge artillery shell wounded my grandfather. Some shrapnel hit his knee. But a comrade of his had it much worse. Grandpa Mike carried this individual, despite the injury to his own knee, to friendly lines. He received the Bronze Star for this action. However,  He never knew if this person ever survived. My grandpa died when I was fourteen from natural causes. This is a generous way of putting it. I would have have loved to have met my Grandpa Mike the man, who  to me as a young boy had such a generous love of all people. Instead the grandfather I met was haunted by the war that stole his youth. Stole his personality, stole the person that could have had so much joy on the inside, not just outwardly. I remember jumping on his lap as an ignorant child and it wound up aggravating his old war wound. I learned much much later that this was only a minor injury to his memory. His children had to deal with him becoming terrified of the smell of cows on long car trips, because they reminded him of oxen, naturally curious animals who are attracted to different smells including those of the human variety, that might have exposed his position. That he whistled in his sleep instinctively, or of those worst of nights, that he grabbed his oldest son the middle of night out of bed to pull him out of the way of imagined gunshots.

I'm sure my grandfather was as wonderful person. He was a hero and he died a hero. But, I believe a lot of him isn't just buried in Cleveland, Ohio, but more so north of the 49th Parallel.

I went to college and wound up joining a fraternity, well I guess to sound fancy it was a "Literary Society" but blah blah blah, semantics aside. One of my closest friends was Zach. Zach was a behemoth of a man, he played defensive line at my college but behemoth could also describe his personality. He was the focal of every party or even regular gathering. I lived with Zach for year in college and were perhaps more opposite in personality as could be. But still, Zach was one of the best friends I have ever had. In between arguments about smelly laundry, various drunken escapes both good and bad, moments of great happiness, anger and sadness, we shared them all. 

A few years after we graduated, Zach had what was thought to be benign tumor near his thigh. It was removed. Sometime around thanksgiving, Zach noticed another odd lump. After a visit to the doctor, he discovered that this lump was terminal cancer. He only had a few month's to live, the doctors told him. The doctors were wrong, he was dead less than a week later.

Zach opted to be cremated. I went to his funeral and wondered how such a big person could fit in something less than the size of a shoe box. I think it was at this point that I learned that we are not defined whatever box we end up in. We only have the moments we impacted those around us. Even if we only had twenty five years to do it.

I think of rotten ways to, even in light of being murdered by your own mother, a pointless war, or even your own body turning on you. But a candidate for awful ways to go is in an airport, which is the fate my dad met. Somewhere in the St. Louis Airport, my dad was waiting to board a plane for yet another business trip. By accounts of witnesses, he wavered and fell face first into the carpet of the boarding gate. We couldn't afford an autopsy. All that can be legally said is that he of dropped dead at the age of 56.

What a rotten time and place to die.

And the life of man, solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short - Thomas Hobbes.

As I and my family walked into the graveyard, picking out a sport to bury my dad. About right into the entrance of the cemetery is the grave site of my old teammate Adam. Born 1990. Died 2002. Somehow, this was the point not when I learned of the news of my dad's passing, when I hugged my siblings and my mother after learning the news, and the days that followed. This is when the pain of death for us survivors hit me the most. 

All of the persons in this story have died long before their time. And yet, me. My worthless ass is still here. By the grace of God I'm still here. All four of these people could have done so much more than I could, By most metrics already have. And yet I still have this precious currency of time. Time to spread love, make people laugh, make people experience joy, do literally anything other than just staring at this computer screen, writing some screed that doesn't matter at all.

For these fours souls, I have a lot of work to do. For whatever reason, I've been given the reason to still give breath on this earth. Meanwhile , the good Lord has decided that for these four people, their time was done. I simultaneously feel like I am on borrowed time, but also on timer to do something worth living. Worth remembering. I don't want a monument to me. But just somebody to think, "Man, I'm glad John was here". As I sit here, I'm not sure I've done that yet. My primal terror, just like that fear of some ball of twine and leather hitting my face, is that I might not have the courage or the ability to accomplish that. 

I'll try to make you all proud. That's all I can do.