I still hope it is possible for John to see our love for him and laugh a bewildered sort of laugh, seeing as though for the first time what he was unable to realize when among us: he was, and is, loved, and there is no greater pinnacle to reach in one's life than to love and be loved. As Christmas draws closer, one can ponder Clarence the angel's reminder to George Bailey: "Remember, no man is a failure who had friends." At least, good friends; the possession of those who do not only make life easier to live, but who make one a better person, striving with you toward becoming the people we can and are meant to be. John had no shortage of such good friends.
But when rereading that line I wrote recently, that he would see our love for him and laugh, I felt a jolt of repulsion. What I watched Wednesday after the funeral changed that. Would it be possible for John to have looked upon his survivors and find joyous laughter within himself, or only sorrow so deep that it seems boundless?
I have never been to a grave site and had the funeral director request that the mourners follow the family to the nearby church for “food and fellowship” because we had stayed abnormally long. No one was leaving, so, against our wills, mourners were asked to part from the site. Until that strange, confounding request by the director, everyone stood around as though lost, not wanting to leave, unable to say goodbye. I will never be able to erase those wretched images from my memory: the looks of confusion, feeble attempts at smiling, tears falling, wiped, falling again, friends collapsing into others’ arms, all so hesitant to leave, no one knowing what to do. In small numbers, groups went to the casket. The tent cast a shadow over John and those mourning him, a dreary site already darkened by the gray sky’s abnormally dim light. No one wanted to say goodbye, and no one knew how. People willed themselves to reach him through that casket, through death, and this longing was too raw and painful. The swim team circled around the casket, held hands, but no one had the strength to pray aloud, but prayers were thought, or at least felt. Nothing broke me more than a boy, no more than nine or ten years old, bent over John’s casket, weeping as his mother comforted him. He was too young to suffer this. Everything seemed so wrong. But that boy was only a few years younger than my students. Aren’t all of them too young for this? Can anyone ever be old enough for this?
People have thanked me for the article I wrote, praising its wording, etc.; I did not and do not want praise, but I am content that mourners have been touched by it. Still, I feel nothing but disgust at my writing when I think of that boy bent over the casket, weeping tears far too big for him. I hope my words brought comfort; but they did not, and they could not ever, bring nearly enough.
Recently a friend, knowing my temperament, gently suggested that in addition to a personal relation, I also have a professional obligation to LCHS students and, by extension, their families; this means that I am also responsible for the elementary students who will one day become Cougars (after all, each action in the present has a ripple effect on how the future unwinds). She prudently worried that students, present or already graduated, may see my honoring of John’s life as a warped justification for causing their own deaths, hoping to exit this world with dignity and meaning bestowed by survivors that could be encapsulated in speech and actions that border on glorification. She did not mention the article, but I made a decent interpretation. She said that I could not, physically or emotionally, write a memorial for every student. She said that I would not know every student as well as I knew John, so how would I write something like this if it happened to more than one? Then I wondered: would there be outrage by those students’ survivors? If so, would this outrage be justified? Would I be culpable? She said that most other students, possibly no other student, is as high profile as John Hendricks: the ideal student, the ideal person, seemingly perfect.
John was not perfect. He seemed like it, but he was not. I knew that. Those who knew him best knew that. Does anyone really believe another person is perfect? Unfortunately, I think we do. We idolize and then become embittered, cynical, or despairing when idols fall. Did we idolize John? Did he feel that pressure? My God, I don’t know. I hope not.
John was suffering in ways we cannot ever comprehend, for he let these thoughts churn inside him without reaching up to those who could help. How long had he felt this way? Why did he not share this with us? Did he not know what this would do to us, to those who barely knew him, to those he never met, to generations to come, to those who paved away in the past roads that would enable him to prosper? Did he not foresee the hundreds of heart wrenching conversations parents never thought they would be forced to have with their children? Did he not consider that multitude who were confused, lost, afraid, devastated at his graveside? Did he not think of other students asking themselves, “If John can’t make it, then how can I?”
I was okay at the funeral until I saw Joe and Kaye walk onto the stage, standing as their son lay only a few feet in front of them. Something miraculous was happening, and as I watched and wept I could not believe that they had the strength to speak, to help us mourn, or even to stand at all. Every word was as sharp as a sword, as powerful as thunder, as rushing as waves crashing all present against the hard rocks of grief. It was not so much that our mourning was dwarfed by theirs (though it was), but that their grief was so unbelievably expansive and magnificent that it became magnanimous: so giant as to cradle our hurts within theirs, helping and humbling us simultaneously.
Then Joe said the words that were the most powerful said that day, if not the most powerful I have ever heard, which had a tangible effect unlike I have ever experienced by articulated speech. After a pause, Joe said: “John made a terrible choice.” He was staring at the hundreds of students clutching one another, looking up for answers, riddled with questions too burdensome to ask, wounded so fundamentally that whatever they stood upon seemed cracked and crumbling. Then he turned to the adults, occupying the other half of the room, having seen so much tragedy in their lives, but nothing like this: “John made a terrible choice.” All of the tension left the room, seeping out as quickly as a sigh. Joe gave us permission to say the words we have been thinking, feeling, and wanting to say. For that moment, we all felt relief. We were all there, united in grief, because something happened that should not have happened. A terrible choice was made, and here we are living with the consequences. It took a grief larger than all of ours to say those words and begin a path of healing that will take many, many years, if not entire lifetimes.
John’s pastor then stated that this one choice will not define John’s life, nor will one faithless act diminish or nullify John’s faith during his life. Those absent cannot know the comfort of hearing these men acknowledge that what happened was wrong.
My friend was right. I cannot let students have a foothold in thinking that they will be likewise exponentially honored and attended if they take their lives, as though the agony of John's survivors somehow justifies their desires to no longer live. In some deep way, these people wonder if they will be missed, and find that such rousing grief would fittingly end a life they no longer want to lead. One of the reasons I write this is to answer the question as to whether you would be missed.
Yes, more than any of us can describe or embody in words, thought, feeling, or action. You will be missed; your absence creates a presence that we cannot forget, grief's looming shadow and your face that we cannot get out of our minds because you have taken from us the chance to ever see your face again.
Therefore, in knowing that you will be missed (missed by people who do not yet, but who would, come to know and love you), assure yourself that you will not miss on this one chance you have: to live.
And I cannot let my words for him be misinterpreted by someone who is enduring unspeakable pain like what John did not share with us. So while his life impacted us beautifully, his death has impacted us with terrors so profound many cannot speak of them. This was not a good death; it was not a glorious way to go, and any glorification was at the way we saw him live until that terrible choice. No one can end life well by choosing to end one's life, and that terrible choice retroactively makes the survivors question and doubt the beautiful, wondrous truths regarding life's magnificence.
But what none of us saw was what he did not share with us, a ghostly vaporous turmoil that latched him, convincing him that we could not help him, or that others should not be burdened by something too heavy for him to carry: the pain that ground away at what we thought was an endless reserve of perseverance. It was not endless perseverance, nor could if have been, because no one can bear that alone.
John may have seemed perfect; but he was not. It was not that he showed us the best of him and hid the worst; what hurts is that he did not let us join him in his worst, help him heal, and then celebrate with him in this triumph. If you thought John was a good guy, can you imagine if he had let us help him face the negative power within him and transform that into something that made him more brilliant, stronger, brighter, greater, whole, filled with love that was always given, but which then could finally be fully received? (do we not have a clue how much we are loved?) Entertaining the idea that John was perfect would be such a grave injustice to that good young man that I could not forgive having the thought; no one, especially no 17 year old, needs such impossible pressure. We don’t know what he thought; and we don’t know what to think. There is a rift having spread through us all, dizzying Logan County and places beyond it to the point of psychological vertigo. We do not know where we are, and so many question who they are, what everything means, and why, why, why.
Why, John?
No one can look upon that grave site and think that what happened with John needs to happen again, to anyone else, young or old. The impact of that death has ruined lives, especially because he had so much more to impact in his life. I cannot convey how many students have told me that this event has drudged up the buried pains of loved ones who had taken their own lives, as though happening all over again. And if this were to happen again, all agony caused by John's death will be resurfaced, making so many start all over.
Do not deceive yourself or let yourself be deceived: the world will not be better without you, you are not beyond help or hope, things will get better, people do care about you, life has meaning (that you can actively enjoy), your soul is beautiful. But those thoughts won’t let you see it; those thoughts don’t want to let anyone else see it either, because when we glimpse into your soul, we see brokenness. But guess what happens if you glimpse in ours? We too are broken. Yet amidst and around and below this brokenness is beauty, wonder, absolute uniqueness.
Dear students, if you let those harmful thoughts creep their way through the darkest cracks of our shared human nature (for we all think them at some point, in some way), it will widen those dark crevices until you fall into them. And if you do not share these thoughts with those who can and will help you, then how will you ever escape? Darkness becomes so thick that you cannot see, and your eyes adjust to the blinding blackness. You must combat those thoughts with a bit of light, holding on to some hope; soldier against them, rage against them, resist them like you are on the foremost front line. Because you are. Behind you are family, friends, so many of us, those who barely know you, those you never met, generations to come, and countless ages before you leading to where you are right now. The front line must keep at bay the darkness of humankind that each of us carries, for the “line of good and evil runs through every human heart,” as Solzhenitsyn said (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Gulag_Archipelago). Each of us is a story that contains all the themes and truths that embody life’s meaning; each is a microcosm, in the Image of the Divine. This means that every person is immensely, incalculably, invaluably important: “The Universe has as many different centers as there are living beings in it. Each of us is a center of the Universe, and that Universe is shattered” when these things happen. John’s Universe shattered, and so consequently did ours. Therefore, we must be vigilant not only as we keep refining and piecing our Universe together, but to do so for those around us who are perhaps too wearied, anxious, afraid, or confused to labor on themselves. We must lift up those who fail, fall, or stumble; we must carry them on our shoulders like Christ carried His cross, the one that was actually ours to bear. For your neighbor’s cross is your own, and yours is his.
The front line must protect and defend all of those behind, whether feeling up to this paramount task or not, and watching the wild, invading army of despair rush toward you seems legitimately terrifying, but by no means impossible. The thought of bearing the weight of the world seems impossible when you are depressed. I know. I was there, sitting in a college class, a tear rolling down my cheek because I not only felt empty, but I felt like there was some primordial vacuum sucking the life out of my soul. Emptiness would have been a vast improvement. It was not the lack of joy, but an anti-joy, a dark sort of feeling that casts everything under a kind of dismal shadow; as Macdonald wrote in Phantastes, "These rays of gloom issued from the central shadow as from a black sun, lengthening and shortening with continual change. But wherever a ray struck, that part of earth, or sea, or sky, became void, and desert, and sad to my heart." Everything was so dim; nothing tasted good; nothing could be enjoyed. I wanted help and hope, but did not know how to ask for it, and doubted it would do any good if I did. I lost sight of my duty to carry my burden and that of others; I kept going through the motions, but I only focused on how I felt. I did not think it was a choice, which was the greatest lie; I felt obligated to my misery, like it was a part of me, a resident occupying my soul, having it on lease. I forgot how to rest, how to play, how to laugh, how to joke. I’m not sure that others saw. I hid it well. I never wanted to end my life, but I wanted my life to end differently than I believed it was going. Hope still hung on, but I could not foresee an end as night grew darker, stronger. I knew that I couldn’t continue as I was going; something had to happen, or else. I shudder to think of what may have happened if I would have contemplated what “else” would have been.
It took a while (and it took my wife) for me to turn around. But I remember when I felt joy for the first time in… days, weeks, months, two years? It was the second tear that ever fell in a classroom; the first from despair, this second one from hope. A girl, an actress, had emptied all theatricality and read with such simple humility a poem by Gerard Manley Hopkins entitled “God’s Grandeur.” I did not know why it struck me, nor how or what exactly I was feeling. I later recognized it as joy, the longing that satisfies merely by having it (a marvelous paradox). Like something cool running against the cracks and crevices of my dried-out heart, like some morning dew that signals the day’s defeat of night, those words watered hope in me that would soon enough learn to grow:
“The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like shining from shook foil;
It gathers to a greatness, like the ooze of oil
Crushed. Why do men then now not reck his rod?
Generations have trod, have trod, have trod;
And all is seared with trade; bleared, smeared with toil;
And wears man's smudge and shares man's smell: the soil is bare now, nor can foot feel, being shod.
And for all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
Because the Holy Ghost over the bent
World broods with warm breast and with ah! bright wings.”
Whether one believes in God or not, the beauty is in the transformation Hopkins honestly portrays with such powerful imagery. The first stanza acknowledges the depths of suffering we encounter in life: both by our own hands and that which is given to us in the living (often embedded in our very genetics, against our wills). I, too, felt so bare, could not feel, and my “toil” and attempts to make things better felt like they were making it worse.
Then there is the second stanza, showing that from below the blackest depths comes “the dearest freshness deep down things,” and the dawn rises with a holy Light, warm and renewing. I did not understand what was happening to me then, in this encounter with joy; nor do I understand it now. All I seemed to know was that, just maybe, those words were meant for even me to read. Maybe even I was important. What if those words were true, and the dawn was on its way? Even for me? Could I have really been important enough to warrant creation, even when every thought I had of myself was wretched and loathsome? May others, may God, have seen something in me that I did not? Was I so omniscient or arrogant to think that I knew myself so well and so fully that I honestly conclude that my life was a grand failure, that I would always be a pathetic fool? Was I so absorbed in my notions of myself that I believed that others may have insights about me that I fail to see? Even if I was as absurd as I thought I was, did I think such condemnations would be helpful or needed? What good would such thinking produce? If the plane seems to be crashing (emphasis on "seems"), then why would I puncture the fuel tank? That is what we do when we entertain those thoughts: one puncture at a time.
Do you not know how important you are? Do you not know what you could transform into becoming (think of the metaphor of the moth or butterfly trapped in its cocoon)? Do you not know the transformative impact you could have on those near to you, on others, on the world itself, all beginning with the single enacted thought where you defy the shadow that latches on to you? Do you not know that you have cosmic significance, absolute uniqueness in the history of being, an undeniable imprint of distinction perhaps brought into being by God Himself? Do you not know that you too are made for joy unending, absolute, filling and satiating, even amidst our greatest sorrows?
We all suffer, and you, unnamed student, do you think that ending your suffering this way would make the world a better place? It would devastate the world, causing a chasm that will still leave a deep, grotesque scar even after those involved were healed as much as they could be. But how many more chasms would erupt from the one you left that leaves such an everlasting scar? Are you willing to bring everyone you know into ruin?
Do you really believe that life itself, or your life in particular, is meaningless, or is that merely what these thoughts tell you? If you hate having these thoughts, then would you not say that these spiraling, abysmal ideas are as detestable as the fact that you have them at all? Think about it: “I hate having these thoughts” and “these thoughts are worthy of hate” could and should lead to the fact that “these thoughts are wrong” and “I need to get rid of these lies by replacing them with truths.” If one is shooting arrows with a stringless bow, the archer needs to acknowledge that he could and would do a much better job with a new bow. Imagine what wonders you could accomplish if those thoughts and feelings were cast out? If these negative thoughts are still present, like planes flying around the sky, contemplate the adventure of living if you were trained to prevent those planes from being able to land, or maybe even shoot those planes down, watching them crash and burn. With such a medal of honor, how could you take this to others and help them combat these enemy planes?
After all, you have felt meaning before. A song has moved you, a friendly face or kind word has made you smile, you have watched an inspiring moment of film or an athlete immaculately at play, you have remembered your grandparent smile when looking at you, how you would run screaming and laughing through the playground, you have felt a loyal dog nestle at your feet, you accomplished a lengthy task and took your rest afterward, you learned something exciting that you before did not know, surely you have heard a child laugh at you or had a baby smile at you, felt what it was like to read your first book or earn your license, held a hand that seemed heavenly to touch, stared at the night sky that always looks like a painting colored anew every evening, brought into being by sunset’s golden colors, its frozen fireworks. You have beheld wondrous things with a wonder-full heart, and at these times you were at the convergence of the right place, the right time, as the right person, and life opened up before you as a door, and past that threshold were unspeakably beautiful things. Have you forgotten this? Do you think that, if beholding such wonder again, that you would fumble and lose it, ruining whatever beautiful comes your way? You may ruin it; but you may not. And even if you do, the grandeur of living is that such opportunities are always presenting themselves, if we have the eyes to see. Often we do not, for it is not that life has nothing worth seeing, but that our eyes are not accustomed to seeing everything worthy life has for us.
Those things above and an infinitude of other experiences: they are meaningless? You don’t really believe that, so stop making arguments you do not believe in, and which are unsupportable, especially the bad argument that life has no meaning, which is a textbook contradiction, a logical statement that tries to logically convey that there is no logic to life. Nihilism is not cute, nor is it correct. You are letting those thoughts have their way with you.
Meaning is how we relate to the world, the dynamic that lets us know that in addition to the world of matter, there is the world that matters. That “mattering” is the realm of meaning, of what is worthy, and perhaps the most basic meaning common to us all is that we cannot understand life without understanding that life happens within a story structure. Within the narrative form all moral, scientific, familial, psychological meanings (et al) have their context.
The question is, then: at what point did you lose your story? Have you ever had it? It’s okay if you haven’t. How many protagonists don’t know what their potential is, where they are, why they are, or who they are when the story starts? Most of them feel this hopeless wandering, wondering what their lives are for. Or are you afraid of what you will see if your story unfolds, and what you will discover or prove about yourself? Do you feel that, in the end, your worst thoughts about yourself will smirk at you: "Told you so. Told you that you were a failure."
Of course we are failures, in one important, positive sense: as infants, we fail at almost everything. Give an infant a paint brush, guitar pick, baseball, pen, etc., and he will merely try to eat it. We are born with so much potential, but actually, we can do next to nothing. In the process of becoming success stories, we fail almost constantly. Ask anyone who has learned an instrument how often they failed in reaching where they are; the failure to success rate is incalculable. And each of these endeavors is a simile to life itself: we are moral failures, told times out of mind by our parents to say "thank you," to control our tempers, to keep trying, to not give up. Times out of mind we are ungrateful, lash out, lose heart, surrender. We feel guilt, try again, go a little farther, then blunder again. What that horrid thought does is manipulate us into thinking that because we have failed, that our primary definition is that of a failure: poorly molded clay, worthy of destruction, of casting out. Instead, failure is a blessed process of becoming; embarrassingly straining to bench the bar so that one can we could lift 300 pounds. This does not glorify failure (especially moral failure), but it does let us know that adversity, suffering, and failure are vital components to the well-lived life.
Again, we all have: 1) all the possible evil that humans can manifest coursing through our hearts. But take courage, for we also: 2) have all the possible good running through us just as strongly, if not stronger. So what could unfold in you that is not common to us all? You have faults? Join our club. You don’t want to be a failure? Neither do we. You are a disaster? We will help you clean up (probably because we have plenty of experience in dealing with disasters). We are all wounded, broken, a conglomeration of mess, though some messes more organized and prettier put together than others. The wisest, most saintly people I know laugh at themselves; never surprised but always amused as how frequently and easily they can fall short. They are also the humblest people I know, the most loving, the most forgiving, and those we most need in our lives. They never taken themselves too seriously, and yet have a seriousness that can bear a multitude of sorrows that others cannot even lift.
Would you please try to resist those harmful thoughts? Would you let someone teach and train you how to do so? You have seen this transformation happen hundreds of times, even if you cannot think of an example off the top of your head... Has your heart ever been stirred by some story of a person believing that he or she does not have what it takes as the journey gets going, but somehow by the end he has become a sort of savior for those he was responsible for? Who are you responsible for now, in the past, in the future? Who is on your team who needs you? Who may need you in the future who you have not even yet met? In one story, all of Middle Earth knelt before a couple hobbits who never gave up on their journey even when they wanted to; even when it seemed that they had good reason to; even when almost all of their lives to that point seemed insignificant to most other people, and they wondered why they even bothered; they never gave up despite the impending feeling that doom felt inevitable. Only once the journey was over could they look back; and only then were they able to see that the world would have been destroyed if they had surrendered. They knelt before their king and the high-profile names in the kingdom. But the king himself knelt, whispering, “My friends, you bow to no one.” Then the kingdom bowed, honoring the lives of those unsuspecting heroes who no one would have ever expected to be the world’s champions. This is not Fantasy, my friend; this is Reality, which is why it speaks so loudly to us: what if you were meant for something similar? You are, which is why the story resounds, echoing throughout our culture with laughter and tears, providing a metaphor for life unlike any fiction one could conjure.
What if the world would be destroyed if you surrendered?
Not everyone is John Hendricks. Not everyone is the student, athlete, thinker, friend, leader, son, and believer that John was. But John made a terrible choice. John chose to end his story. For so many of us, the world has been destroyed, and it will take time for it to be remade.
But your story is still going, maybe not even to the inciting incident as of yet. An entire mythology is under way, with you as its protagonist; this singular story is connected to dozens, hundreds more; beyond your own family and friends, beyond people you have ever met; framed within the entire human race, present, past, and future; this story is something cosmic.
You have no idea the impact you will have in your life, even in this very moment, in every choice you make, even (and especially) the impact of every thought you entertain or conjure up. It all begins there: in these thoughts and feelings. That is the battleground of the soul. That is where the great Eye scourges and plagues, seeking something good or potentially good in us to devour. And if Frodo could not make the journey alone, a simple hobbit, then why do we think we can carry our loads without help? Why will you not share the load? Of course it is yours to carry, but can you not let us carry you to that everlasting fire so you can let fall that darkness inside you, watching it plummet into oblivion? Can you imagine the beauty of a life without these thoughts, or with the skill to prevent them from landing in your heart and mind? Who knows, those villainous pilots may become frustrated in circling or lose fuel, and in frustration, fly away. Imagine what it would feel like to watch them retreat into the distance.
We’re here to help, we want to help, but what if you don’t want our help? Worse yet, what if you think you don’t deserve help? What if you think that you have nothing and no one to live for? What if you think that things will never get better? What if you think you are beyond help?
Teachers and parents and students are worried, my friend. No one wants to endure this again, because we do not know if we can. By this terrible choice, you will not end your suffering; you will compound and exponentialize it, hurl it outward as it spreads, unleashed, growing into some monstrous thing that gnaws on us all. In legends, there is always some knight to slay the dragon. But who will be our St. George if this were to happen again?
I will miss John so much. I cannot get his smile out of my mind, his kind voice out of my ears. But the anxiety of fearing that this may happen again is what worries me most.
Life feels always uphill, rising, the next trial more difficult than the last. And you may not want to scale the crags ahead, unable to see the distant peak through the veil of fog and cloud. Mount Doom is steep, wreathed in fire, ash, and smoke. But do you not wonder what the view will look like when you get to its top, after the most recent battle is won, recalling the hellscape you have endured to get where you most blessedly are? Your suffering can grant you an unspeakable power to transform your life into the most beautiful image of what it means to live, an icon of fulfilled living, an example of glory through adversity. “I almost decided to give up,” you will tell people some day with a shake of the head and an unbelieving, bewildered smile. “Really, I was this close.” They won’t believe you; you will hardly believe it yourself. They will see what you have become; and having come so far, you will have forgotten what it looks like to be at the foot of the Mountain looking up. It will not be that you stayed at the Mountaintop twiddling your thumbs, but that you were scaling back down to help others rise; you forgot what it looked like to stare upward from the foot of the Mountain because you will have been too busy looking down, reaching your arms to help pull people up. “I’ve been where you are once,” you will humbly smile. “Maybe not exactly the same. But I’ve been there. And I’m with you now.” Hand outstretched, eyes alight with beautiful miracle. “Will you come with us?” You will see your old anxiety, insecurity, and despair in their eyes that avert yours, feeling that their darkness cannot look into whatever light you possess. Still, your hand reaches further down: "Will you come with us, friend?" They don't believe in themselves; but you believe in them, and for that blessed moment, they trust you; they believe in you that you believe in them. They, for maybe the first time, wonder if they are worth it after all. You were there once. That may be where you are at present.
So grab the hands offered to you now, for those calloused outstretched palms have suffered too; maybe not like you, not as you have or as much as you have, but they will bear your suffering with you. Will you go with them?
And do not assume that my words or that of another glorify a terrible choice: do not misunderstand my intent to help myself and others mourn someone we loved. Trust me, we would all rather sponge away our words and sentiments to have him back again.
Do you think that you are any different? Do you really believe that your life is less valuable than his was? If so, you are tragically wrong. Not as many people may know you as they knew John; but one life ruined is far more than enough. And what about the lives you will meet? I did not know my wife when I was in despair. 13 years ago I would not have known that I would have three kids of my own, so adored and bringing joy by their slightest words and movements. I could not see beyond my own pain then, and if I never would have looked beyond it, then who knows what I would have done. And people taught me how to look. Friends, authors, mentors, family. I could not fix my gaze on my own.
John’s life may have impacted more people than most of ours ever will. But if he could have seen how much agony comes with the impact of his death...
I have always thought a great deal about life and death. It is, after all, the most paramount theme in literature: life, death, rebirth. Why is that? Aristotle once argued, and so have story scholars since, that “art imitates life.” In other words, fictional stories condense the most vital truths of our existence in the most concrete, accessible form (2 hours or 300 pages) in order to reveal to us the meanings of life. Literature reminds us what it means to live, and offers countless cautionary tales on what not to do, and inspiring narratives of what we are meant to do. In every story, we become the worst villain and greatest hero.
John’s life is a grand narrative; his death is a cautionary tale.
We need each of you here, each day, doing your best to live out the story given to you. Some are given more painful lives than others, and some lives seemed charmed from the beginning. But each life suffers immensely, at different points, and there are some who seem to suffer almost at every point. After all, almost everything hurts: thinking hard hurts, blisters on your thumb from learning the guitar hurts, manual labor hurts, standing or sitting at a desk all day hurts, training for a 5K hurts, graduating and moving on hurts, watching your child walk into school or drive a car for the first time hurts, remembering your long-gone childhood hurts, growing up hurts, growing old hurts, letting go hurts. Even the best things we can encounter involve intricate pains; it is only that our worst times have pain that confuses us, discourages us, threatens us, lies to us.
Let us try to see that pain differently. We are each and all on the front lines, our lives imbued with meaning richer than we can ever comprehend, so massively important that it is much easier to assume that life is meaningless so you do not have to contemplate the importance of your being here. For who can bear the weight of living as we are meant to? Alone, no one can.
Believing that life is meaningless may be easier, but it is a gross perversion of who you are and who you can be. Believing in nothing lets off some of the weight of obligation roll from your shoulders; but that obligation only rolls, accumulates, and returns to crush you - a little weight shirked now, which becomes an enormous mountain later. Life is obligation, begging of us heroic action whether we feel up to it or not. We can bear it, ignore it, shun it, run from it, hide from it, resist it, but still the call echoes in our hearts even when we press our palms against our ears, screaming to silence it. It may not feel fair to think of life as obligation, or a call that you have no choice to accept, but failing to do so will be your peril. Is life's meaning pleasure or your own happiness? These are pitiful cardboard cutouts of the real meaning that makes us transcend life as it is right now to life as it could be, and should be. Life is full of pain and things we cannot be happy about; those "meanings" only work a fraction of the time. But the Call, the thing that defines the entire arc of each story ever written or lived out, is the adventure that gives life its fullest, overflowing meaning.
Besides, the faulty belief in life's meaninglessness does not resonate with how life works. You have no idea what you could become, how wondrously transformed you could be to the point that you would not recognize yourself as you are now if looking back at yourself then; except that all these virtues in you now (which you cannot or will not notice) that are mere saplings will then be forests, filled with fruits that nourish all who partake of them. Living is a beautiful burden worth shouldering, for dependent upon us are human lives collective, connected in unfathomable ways across vast stretches of time, requiring us to give all we have to the present time that will soon enough become everyone’s future.
We need you right now, each of you, all of you; whether everyone knows your name or if you feel like no one does: we need you right now, each of you, all of you; if you have coasted through life with relative ease, or if your path has been wrecked upon every shore you hoped would bring rest, which only casts you back out into the dark turbulence of the seas: we need you right now, each of you, all of you; if in your friendliness and brightness you have never known a stranger, or if you believe yourself to be outcast and alone, the sole stranger among a world of friends: we need you right now, each of you, all of you; if your thoughts are occupied by happy reveries of the past and hopeful images of the future, or if you are tormented by things you feel ashamed to utter, too embarrassed to convey, too heavy to give words: we need you right now, each of you, all of you; if you live humbly and know your place in the world, or if you hate what you see in the mirror, or feel rudderless and lost in those aforementioned dark waves: we need you right now, each of you, all of you. No matter what you have done or what has been done to you; no matter what you feel or think about yourself or life itself:
For all this, nature is never spent;
There lives the dearest freshness deep down things;
And though the last lights off the black West went
Oh, morning, at the brown brink eastward, springs
We need you right now, each of you, all of you.
Your story is not finished, because our story is not finished, and our stories overlap in a near-infinite beatitude that needs telling until each one resolves, slowly and satisfactorily bending to and bowing before the next. Your story is one worth telling, and your inability to see that right now or years later (whenever despair may strike you) does not nullify this fundamental truth. Your feelings cannot trump or contradict the truth, no matter how strong your feelings are (and these negative feelings are narcissistic, foolishly suggesting that they are God, omnipotent, omnipresent, undeniable). Waves incessantly smash against the hard rock of Earth, and it is still unfazed; no matter how frequently and powerful your feelings crash against the Truth, the Truth is absolutely undisturbed. If your thoughts steal your peace, and your feelings torment your resolve, take refuge and rest in that there is the hard rock of Truth that is on the horizon if you will have the eyes to see, waiting for you to wash ashore, to pass just beyond your feelings so that you can begin to walk, albeit feebly, on some place worth standing. The Truth you can start with is that your life is one worth living, a story that needs to unfold toward its grand resolution. Second, there are people to help you live it optimally. Third, it takes time and small steps to get where you need to; a frustratingly slow pace. Four, others have been where you are and where you are going; your journey is common to us all, and any fiction worth watching or reading has expressed this almost as uniquely as the real human lives that such fictions represent. And five, there is grace with you and for you all along the way.
We are storytelling creatures, and creatures who live out stories. Our lives only make sense when witnessed through the lens of a narrative; this is why I became a Literature teacher, after all. It is the only lens through which we can see human life most clearly. If you cannot see your story right now, that is okay, but not if you stay that way. If you believe lies that your story is meaningless, and that you, like Macbeth, come to believe that life “is a tale told by an idiot, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing,” then, like Macbeth, you will have let these thoughts lead you down a dangerous path to a hellish place; to make matters worse, Macbeth refused to swerve off that wretched pathway in each of the several opportunities granted to him. Even once he believed that life is meaningless, he still chose actions that would only make life seem more meaningless to him. He let the dark suggestions fill him from head to toe, enabling the darkness to blind him. Contrarily, Hamlet’s last words to his dear friend, after having overthrown the tyrant that ruined his country, are: “Tell my story… the rest is silence.” Everyone knows Hamlet’s famous words when he wonders whether, because life is so painful, it is better to live in this world or to die, “to be or not to be.” Most people do not know what path he chooses, but it is the opposite of Macbeth. Hamlet chooses life, and by the end, he dies a good death, kills the “serpent that stung” the life of the Kingdom, and allowed a virtuous king to come occupy the throne after healing the kingdom from the serpent’s poison. The king’s first edict is to give Hamlet a soldier’s burial, and to be honored, for Hamlet was at the front line of his people's story, and he elected to bear the weight of his own story. Though at several points Hamlet wavered, doubted, suffered, and sometimes his suffering was his own fault (other times it was not), he nonetheless persevered. He finished his story well; not perfectly, but as good as he could do, which was more than enough. It was a hectic ending, but a good ending: one worth telling, which we still tell today in order that students know that it is best “to be,” and that “to be” is always better than “not to be.” That is the answer to his question. Fools think Hamlet's soliloquy is about suicide. It is about whether life is worth living; and that most teachers fail to reveal this answer to students shows the psychologically and spiritually crippled age in which we live. Hamlet mourned to his friends that he understood the grandeur of life, but he could not feel it. Is this not depression at work? Still, he works through this with the help of a dear friend, supportive parent, and the memory of his mentor (his father). Forgiveness is given; peace is made; and Hamlet surrenders himself to the fact that so much is out of his hands, and he will rest in the fact that "there is a special providence in the fall of a sparrow," so no matter what scheme or circumstance finds us, "the readiness [to face it] it all," so "Let be" whatever comes. These are no longer the words of depression, but of heroic bravery. They can emerge through our mouths and from our hearts, too.
We loathe fictions with bad endings, because real lives with such endings are the bitter things which those fictions represent. John’s life was a good story with an ending that pains us, because it was not the story that should have been told.
After waiting for thirty minutes near the tent, I had to ask a few 4th period students to approach the casket with me and say the goodbye that I did not want to say. I told them that I could not do it alone, and like brothers and sisters in arms, they walked with me. We gathered around, wept, prayed and spoke silently, and one after another, we parted, having shouldered one another’s grief, because none of us could uphold it alone.
But since then, it is not only 4th period that is on my mind. 1st, 3rd, 5th, 6th, 8th, past students: they all keep flooding my mind’s eye, no one of them more important than another, and no one less important. In these thoughts, each of these students becomes revealed as what he or she is: a person, a protagonist whose story is still rising upward. Yeah, 4th period (as of now) may be an all-time favorite; but they are a favorite of favorites, first place among firsts. Each story is unique, so is each class, so is each student. What wonder surrounds us all the time, hidden within and at times shining through the ordinary people around us. But then again, what if there are no ordinary people? As C.S. Lewis once said:
"It may be possible for each to think too much of his own potential glory hereafter; it is hardly possible for him to think too often or too deeply about that of his neighbour. The load, or weight, or burden of my neighbour’s glory should be laid daily on my back, a load so heavy that only humility can carry it, and the backs of the proud will be broken. It is a serious thing to live in a society of possible gods and goddesses, to remember that the dullest and most uninteresting person you talk to may one day be a creature which, if you saw it now, you would be strongly tempted to worship, or else a horror and a corruption such as you now meet, if at all, only in a nightmare. All day long we are, in some degree, helping each other to one or other of these destinations. It is in the light of these overwhelming possibilities, it is with the awe and the circumspection proper to them, that we should conduct all our dealings with one another, all friendships, all loves, all play, all politics. There are no ordinary people. You have never talked to a mere mortal. Nations, cultures, arts, civilizations—these are mortal, and their life is to ours as the life of a gnat. But it is immortals whom we joke with, work with, marry, snub, and exploit—immortal horrors or everlasting splendours. This does not mean that we are to be perpetually solemn. We must play. But our merriment must be of that kind (and it is, in fact, the merriest kind) which exists between people who have, from the outset, taken each other seriously—no flippancy, no superiority, no presumption. And our charity must be a real and costly love, with deep feeling for the sins in spite of which we love the sinner—no mere tolerance or indulgence which parodies love as flippancy parodies merriment."
Lewis then mentions that it may be that "your neighbour is the holiest object presented to your senses." Each person around you is a protagonist, and have you noticed that the Plot Diagram looks similar to a mountain? Most of the story is spent going painfully uphill, when trials and tribulations are relentlessly smashing apart one’s hard-earned stability, constantly threatening us with ever-increasing chaos. In these moments, do we ever want the protagonist to give up, turn around, or end her own story? Of course not. We pray she keeps going. We want her to finish what has been started, and our hearts long against a tragedy. Sometimes we avert our eyes. We cannot watch. But we do, waiting for the resolution, hoping for a good one.
We want the same for you. No matter how mistreated you have been, find some who will care for you; if you feel that you cannot find such a person, anticipate the friend you long to have, and wait for him or her (if you cannot find such a person, you must have never met Robie Malcomson); but as you wait, find others who will help you along your adventure; they are there, far more numerous than you could imagine; they are around even if, in your sorrow, you do not want to look; scale that rising mountain, embrace those struggles; but do not climb with the belief that you are alone, that your journey is meaningless, that your efforts are not enough, that you are helpless, or that you are not enough. Scale and rise, knowing that those you trust may let you down at some point, because we too are scaling ahead, rising painfully, failing times out of mind, but learning through our common struggle, failing less with each effort; the calluses are hardening, music now coming forth in melody, something beautiful being played by your flesh and bone that chooses to wake up and live each morning, choosing to go to bed each night in wait for another “morning, at the brown brink eastward” that “springs” into a day worth living: today, tomorrow, forever, able to redeem everything in the past, aimed ahead at the Resolution we have all been waiting for.
But we will rise through all of this together. And if any of us falls, let the rest of us raise him up; and if we fall, even if you feel too weak to catch us, extend your hand, and maybe helping another will help surface the latent strength within you that has been waiting to spring forth, a strength you did not know you had.
Let us know that you are slipping or falling. Do not give up on us. Death is not the end, and neither is your life is not at its end. There are chapters and pages aplenty, with wonders you could not imagine and would not believe until you live out the story for which you were made, moved along by those sweet pangs of joy given when we need them most.
Joy, like Samwise's memory of "strawberries and cream," of Aragorn's memory of his beloved, of Scrooge's jubilant and child-like rejoicing atop the very bed in which three terrifying ghosts met him the night before, of George Bailey kissing that defunct ball on the railing post: what once was a reminder of failure has become transformed into the embodiment of the fact that life is wonderful. Joy experienced through and after suffering. Watching one's dearest friends coming in to check on you after you have won your journey and completed your adventure. No words can be spoken; only pure laughter, the utterance of names more precious to you than all the world's treasures (even the endless stashes of your uncle's gold). Then, glances at your right hand, there is the friend you could not do without; the friend who could not do without you. There are no words; only celebration and rejoicing.
Do you think that joy is something only meant for Frodo and his friends, for a repentant Scrooge or George Bailey who realized that his life is worth living after all? Joy is powerful in fiction because it is even more powerful in real life. If joy was meant for them, it is meant for you exponentially more.
Last Friday, I had my 8th period after we all found out that John died. I looked down at one student’s Christmas outfit. I caught her in a rare moment of smiling, though tears shone in her eyes. I complimented her wild attire, and she laughed. I laughed. A few of us said a few jokes. I shared a couple memories of John. We cried, laughed, and then some other students came in. We hugged for a while, and could not speak. We just sat there, silently. Somehow, I heard a few students laughing, though tears still fell. Even in our unfathomable sorrow, there was joy. Monday, I saw Cheyenne and Bella in another room. We hugged and tried not to cry. I told them we were having a Mario Kart tournament in another room, and would be goofing off all day if they cared to join us. Several minutes later, they came in to a room of solemn laughter. They played (Cheyenne was remarkably terrible at Mario Kart). Sometimes some of us would get sad; but we had each other, and no matter our sorrow, there was still joy. Sorrowful Joy.
We all fell due to John’s terrible choice; but we will try rising together. Even if you don’t feel like it, please rise with us. We need you now, and who knows how many will need you later.
For whatever other reasons Christmas was chosen to be celebrated at this point in December, it is at least significant that the Light of the world dwells among us following the darkest day of the year; when the world as at its darkest point, when goodness seems snuffed out by insufferable tragedies and evils, then the Light humbly appears, even when most of the world fails to see. The world can be filled with wonders, and the Wonder of wonders, but we can miss this. The entire world missed this once; we often miss this too, distracted by life's darkness to the point that we become accustomed to dimmed vision. We may even begin to think that no divine star is present, or if it is, there is no way it is signing to us that we have a journey ahead worth taking. But what shining thing beckons us forward, burdened as we are? What miracle will be before our eyes, if we would only keep walking through the desert in the darkest hours of the darkest night?
John was, in all likelihood, the best young man I have ever known, or he seemed that way to me. But I think so many more who knew him will become better, because they will not let their lives resolve that way, and they will not bear their burdens alone.
We want to see the men and women you will become. You can and will become better than John if you try even half as hard as he did when we watched him live. John told us that we could accomplish wonderful things, and we watched him accomplish wonderful things, but the wonder slipped away from him.
Do not give up. If you think others expect too much of you or you expect too much of yourself, let us share your burden as you seek some rest; if you believe others think too little of you or you expect too little of yourself, let us help you see the wonder for which you were made. There are mountains to climb, darkness to be destroyed, light to be let loose, wondrous joy just beyond your reach as we learn how to stretch our hearts.
We can’t lose you, too; not when you have everything from living that can be gained.
Yes, John is so important to us.
But, my dear God, so are you.
Will you rise with us? Here are our hands.