Hi everyone,
I've just arrived home after a tumultuous last couple weeks at camp. One night two weeks ago, I was getting ready for bed in my shack, listening to music and watching my roommate mouse scamper around my stuff, shitting at will. Just then, my cell phone rang, and it was Sam, one of my longtime friends from home. I picked up and gave him a loud friendly greeting, but he responded quietly, strangely. He told me that just half an hour ago one of our best friends Adrian had collapsed while they were playing soccer. He'd had a heart attack. Paramedics had brought him to the hospital, where he was now in critical condition. All the guys at home were there, but they didn't know anything beyond what he'd told me.
I wasn't sure how to react. I told Sam to obviously keep me posted, and went to bed hoping for the best, realizing that I didn't think I even possessed a spot on my emotional spectrum for the death of a close friend.
I was awoken an hour later by my friend Peter leaving a message on my voicemail. He was crying and told me to call him back. When I called him from my darkened bed, he asked me if I had spoken to anyone yet. When I told him not since I'd talked to Sam an hour ago, he broke down sobbing and told me that Adro just couldn't hold on, and had died in the hospital.
It didn't make sense. Adro was a track star at Williams. His heart should be the healthiest in the business. He'd been diagnosed with an irregular heartbeat about a year ago, but doctors had since cleared him for normal physical activity. Adro, who I'd grown up with, one of the kindest, smartest, most excellent human beings I know, entering the prime of his life, was dead.
The last two weeks, I've been shuttling back and forth between camp and Concord, wanting to be with my mourning friends at home, but still knowing that I have a job to finish at camp. It was strange, returning to camp each time with such a heavy heart, but trying to put on a happy face for the kids, trying to emerse myself in work and to reserve my crying and sulking for the time before bed when I could be alone in my room.
3 days after learning about Adro, I learned that one of my first session campers had drowned in his grandfather's swimming pool while playing an underwater breath-holding game. He was an awesome kid -- funny, compassionate, responsible, charismatic, and had a freaking ripped body already. His abs frightened me. He was 14.
What the fuck was going on here? We all understand that random deaths happen, but those few days made life and death seem so completely and utterly arbitrary, capricious, cruel even. We invest so much emotionally only to see it all plucked away, often with no warning. Nothing seems right. Nothing seems just.
I'm writing this for two reasons. One is just to let you guys all know what I've been feeling, and to let you know the source of the hardness that has formed inside me which I know has made its way into my mood, my actions, my tone of voice. I don't mean to seem callous. The other reason is to just remind everyone to hold onto those you care about the most. Tell them that you love them and miss them. Tell them how much they mean to you. Especially after a lot of us are dispersing after Brown, don't let distance or inconvenience allow important friendships to drift. You never know when your words to someone will be the last they ever hear from you.
That said, I love you all, and miss you all very much. Please take care in your adventures, keep us posted, and visit often.
