As a kid, one of my favorite movies was Harriet the Spy, and, to this day, I still heed an important tenet I picked up from the protagonist: “I learn everything I can and I write down everything I see. Golly says if I want to be a writer then I’d better start now.” I do aspire to be a writer — a science journalist, that is — which is why I have to write this blog post, even though it’s the hardest thing I’ve ever had to write.
A month ago today, on May 26, a mere six days into the beginning of my summer vacation, I woke up to a text message from my best friend from home, urging me to call her. The resulting conversation started with “Are you sitting down?” which, once I was situated on the floor of my porch, was closely followed by the news that a friend, Luke, from high school had died unexpectedly the previous night.
I’ve always relied on writing as a way to express myself, but words suddenly seem like such a wildly inadequate way of trying to make sense of the senseless events of the last few weeks. I’ve been attempting to write this post since I got the call, but nothing seems to quite cut it, and I can’t even tell you how many times I’ve scrapped the whole thing and started over.
Luke and I weren’t close on a one-on-one basis, but he was — and still is — extremely important to a number of my closest friends, which makes him important to me by extension.
Despite being just a few months away from his 20th birthday, Luke had a thirst for life, adventure, ambition, and loyalty that many 80-year-olds could only dream of exhibiting. He somehow managed to condense a passionately full experience into a very short amount of years. That, more than any of the conversations I’ve had with him or any of the stories I’ve heard about him, is the best example that he left for me, personally, on the most enduring way to be alive.
On June 10, Luke’s family held a beautiful event in his honor, which they called a “celebration of life” instead of a memorial service. Although there is such a subtle difference in connotation between the two phrases, choosing the former shaped the entire mood of the day and made it one where people couldn’t help but smile beneath their mournful tears, something I truly believe Luke would’ve appreciated. He was a bit of a troublemaker and a rule-bender, but he could get himself out of any situation by flashing an absolutely irresistible smile.
The celebration of life was particularly overwhelming, though, not just because of its tragic necessitation, but because it occurred on June 10, 2012 — the exact two-year anniversary of when Luke, along with me and all of our classmates, graduated from high school together.
There was just something so arresting about the fact that exactly two years after the class of 2010 started its journey into adult life, hundreds of us were gathered to commemorate the fact that our classmate’s journey had just ended. There isn’t anything fair or reasonable about that, but it’s just a particularly poignant fact that has now incorporated itself into the life story of every single one of Luke’s peers.
The most overwhelming part of that whole day — and this experience overall — was a slideshow his younger sister put together. I can’t even begin to explain what it feels like to see a slew of goofy, loving baby pictures, full of so much potential, when you know how the story ends.
Ultimately, throughout the day, I think there were easily over 300 people who attended the celebration of Luke’s life, which is such a testament to the legacy he left behind. There were classmates, friends, neighbors, family members, parents, and teachers there. People came from right around the block, from other parts of Massachusetts, from across the country, and even from across the world, including Germany, Peru, Italy, Brazil, and Switzerland. Nothing explains Luke’s illustrious character better than the fact that a mere 19-year-old was able to posthumously command that kind of assembly.
But, even in the face of such a powerful outpouring of love and respect, there is still a lurking sense of surrealism.
There’s not too much that I remember from high school math, but one of the things I do remember is the concept of an asymptote — a line that a curve approaches, but never reaches, for infinity. That’s how this whole situation feels to me; there are some moments, more than others, when it approaches reality, but it never quite gets there, and I suspect it will feel that way forever.
If there’s anything I’ve learned from being friends with physics majors at Rochester, it’s that energy can neither be created nor destroyed — so, with that knowledge in hand, I assure you that Luke technically being gone doesn’t in any way mean he’s actually gone. I’m absolutely positive that, in Luke’s physical absence, the energy with which he approached life has been redistributed among every single person whom he ever positively affected, even in some small way.
Luke, thank you for being one of the few people I’ve met who never made excuses or compromises for being himself, thank you for inspiring me to emulate that quality, and thank you for reminding me to keep smiling no matter what. You were — are — one of the good ones.
