The End of Things

A college friend of mine died over the weekend after falling off the roof of his apartment building in New York. We heard from his parents that he “slipped while climbing to his favorite spot.” I don’t fault him his affection for the rooftop view. The Manhattan skyline is spectacular at night.

I ran track with Pat for either one or two years, I can’t remember exactly. He was incredibly outgoing and pretty wild. I know that he left school for a couple of semesters to deal with depression, so I’m sure that the wildness helped deflect attention from the sadness.

I’m not used to people from my age group dying. I’ve never been to a friend’s funeral. It feels like there’s a big difference between the death of a young person and the death of an older person. When we young people go to an older relatives’ funeral, it seems to make more sense. A life has ended, but at least a life has been fully lived.

When our friends die, we are not comforted by the ordered nature of everything: the funeral, the burial, the grieving process. Everything is new, nothing is familiar, and the finality of it haunts us. There is so much left undone. You just can’t get your head around it.