You'll have to forgive the punctuation and sentence structure..we can't all be English majors. Sam used to make fun of me all the time.

I moved away from Minnesota nine years ago after finishing college as a way to start a new path and find my identity as an adult. Admittedly, I tried to leave a lot of emotions about Sam behind because even a year after his death I couldn’t really handle thinking about him without feeling cheated, hurt, angry or lost. I was 22 and there was no justice or reconciliation to be had with losing my first love.
The funny thing about emotions is that they eventually catch up with you so when I stopped being hurt and angry I tried to think about why I felt so happy spending time with Sam.
Sam was magnetic and the days we spent together, although far too short in number, were effortless. He was a bright guy, witty, playful and competitive. He was compassionate and always tried to build up the self esteem of those around him careful not to make anyone feel small or slow. He had a presence that was larger than life but didn’t demand attention. He described himself “corny” because he found peace in the quiet of nature. He called himself “geeky” because he was proud to love learning and he was proud to love life.
When I think of Sam now I remember his laugh or I’ll think of the look he would get on his face just after he’s said something clever.
The reality is that at 22 years of age with Sam planning to student teach in Japan I don’t know where our paths would have taken us. Part of the tragedy of loss lies in the unknown future we anticipated with such great hope.
I have learned not to accept the standard answers we give because we are uncomfortable with grief. NOT everything happens for a reason. Sometimes bad things do happen to good people. These are real aspects of life. There is one exception and that is given enough time all wounds heal-- at least in part.
I am proud to have been involved in the life of such an extraordinary person.

(written by Johanne Bates)

Sam was always someone older than me; even older than my older brother. He was a star student and Knowledge-bowl member of my mother’s, a guide for another crew on my first Voyageur’s session, and happily, my guide on the Kazan River. He was always someone to esteem, to look up to BUT I always talked to him like a friend, a peer, like an equal. The last time I talked to him, he grabbed the phone from Steve, mid-conversation mind you, and we delved into an old fashion bit of back and forth banter…That was ten years ago, and I never could have guessed that casual chatter – the details of which I have forgotten – would be our last exchange. Now I’m 28, and to look at pictures of Sam when he was 22, to see him as someone younger than I am now is difficult. Because he’ll always be the older, reassuring voice that said I could keep driving for a few more hours when I told him I thought I had Highway hypnosis, or promised me there was no way we could run out of gas even though the red Empty light was shining…When I had stomach pains and some digestive clogging on the Kazan and couldn’t eat, he handed me a suppository and laughed…Sam’s smile, his endless assurance and relaxed confidence remain something I will always be in awe of, and I am happy to say I see these qualities, to my continual amazement, joy (and sometimes annoyance) in his brother, my good friend, Steve.
Writing any more would be excessive. It is enough to say I am grateful to have known Sam for the brief time I did. But I am haunted by the conversations we never had, the experiences we could have shared: but these are selfish thoughts I should know better than to indulge. Remembering Sam reminds me to be grateful for all the relationships I have and have had.

(this came from Peter Marshall, yesterday)

same dead sam

young man,

a certain piece

of metal in the lung.

of smile on the lip,

of drive across town.

takes his last breath,

one hallway from the first.

nothing will be the same,

nothing can be the same,

nothing is the same.

same as sam.

dead.

in june, the leaves are still new.

in june, the hose water runs cold.

the sky, it's late afternoon,

plants a cloud over the park.

the moon comes up later.

the neighbors watch,

then bring hotdish.

and i think.

push lungs out

real big

knock whole place down.

(i wrote this poem, sometime later, and finished it in utah.

and i give credit to scott sell, for the ending)

My Friend Sam: A Remembrance

John Steingraeber (2000)

". . . life which is so fantastic cannot be altogether tragic." Virginia Woolf

The details are as follows: Samuel James Keaveny died on June 7, 2000, of cardiopulmonary arrest due to an undiagnosed abnormal heart rhythm. Earlier that day he had aspirated a small piece of metal into his lungs. While undergoing a bronchoscopy in St. Cloud, he suddenly died. Autopsy results now show that there were abnormalities in both the size and structure of his heart, which inhibited resuscitation efforts. Sam had majored in English at St. John's. He graduated just three weeks prior to his death. He was only twenty-two years old. He was also my friend.

But any life--or death, in this case--when reduced to mere details, has the potential to be little more than a recitation of those details. This life deserves more. Indeed, this life was more.

I learned of Sam's death late the night that he died. At first, I felt an incredible emptiness--that, along with incredulousness. I was being forced to swallow a pill that I did not want, let alone know existed. A voice on the phone was telling me that Sam--my friend, my confidant, my soulmate--was now dead. This was nothing more than information to me, and I had no sense of what to do with it. So I did what any idealist would do: I began by refusing to accept that information.

At the time, I was living outside a small town on the Minnesota-Canada border in a cabin on the edge of the Boundary Waters Canoe Area. After I hung up the phone, I ran out into the woods. I seized deadfall logs and smashed them against trees. I snatched rocks and sticks from the ground, hurling them into the darkness. I tore saplings and grasses from the soil and scattered them in my wake. I refused to let go.

On a canoe expedition later in the summer, I watched the moon rise over the shores of Horse Lake in the midst of the most incredible meteor shower I had ever seen. Sam still weighed heavily on my mind, and it occurred to me that his life, if compressed into a few seconds, would bear a striking resemblance to the tiny pieces of space dust that I was watching: it started out as a slender streak of fire in the darkness, exploded with screaming intensity, and then simply stopped. Fantastic, certainly, but not altogether tragic, because I felt Sam all around me and inside of me as well.

Now, nearly five months later, I still refuse to let go. A few weeks ago I spoke at a memorial gathering at St. John's. The Peer Resource Program, of which Sam and I were both active members, had arranged for an evergreen tree to be planted in Sam’s memory in front of the Warner Palaestra at St. John's. Speaking, I reflected on my relationship with Sam and how in the wake of his death I found myself cherishing life with an almost manic intensity, refusing to leave any words unspoken, any plans unfinished, any tears unshed. I was certain that if I were to die the next day, there were things that I would regret.

There is, however, one thing that I am certain I do not regret: loving Sam. The greatest part about having Sam in my life was that we never forgot to say "I love you." Sam was a hefty man, and I am hardly petite. But in the last two years of our friendship, I cannot recall a time when Sam and I parted ways without a hug, a smile, and an I love you. I mentioned before that there were irregularities in the size of his heart; Sam's heart was nearly six hundred grams, almost twice the size of an average human heart. This fact, while rich in metaphor, is also appropriate: this man had a heart bigger than most, and it matched his life. He moved in circles bigger than most, laughed louder than most, and allowed himself to hurt more deeply than most. No regrets.

But regret, while perhaps the gravest of sins, appears to be necessary as well; and things that are necessary are things that must be accepted. So perhaps in the midst of my refusal to let go of Sam is a sort of Zen-like acceptance of that refusal. And somewhere between the refusal and the acceptance, I have managed to make peace with this tragedy.

The solace that I find comes not from within me but from something Sam wrote just a few weeks before he graduated: "There is so much that happens beneath consciousness, and to deny this is to miss out on a lot of life. Stories within stories, levels of meaning, and people you thought you knew (including yourself) with so much depth, so much potential of character that it's nearly overwhelming. This is the dream I live now, as I move on into life. I'm trying my best, and I don't know what script I'll be following, but I'm ready for it."

Although Sam did not wake up on June 7 knowing that he would die later that afternoon, I really do think he was ready for it. And while I do not think unexpected, sudden deaths are ever an acceptable end to life, they seem all the more unpalatable in the context of a shooting star like Sam. But death, like regret, is necessary, and thus it too must be accepted. We must learn to be ready for it because there is no way to know whose life may simply stop next. It could be our dog's or our friend's spouse's--or it could be our own.

post from john steingraber

Today I was thinking "My son is going to die one week from today..." Wierd, I know. But the thing is, he was so alive a week before he died. He was involved and talkative and had just graduated from a place where he loved the people and was looking forward to summer wilderness adventure and an international journey. Who would have ever guessed that - at that time - he could die? And now he's dead, even though each year at this time I think about him so much - and those last days - which I didn't know at the time were going to be so darn important to me. I would love to hear stories from other people of how he touched their lives. At the time of his death I listened to everyone and was a bit numb. Now I am ready to hear. - this post is by jan keaveny (facilitated by mrs. hopper)

sam as a three year old

the memorial that his crew brought to the confluence of the Hayes/God's rivers.

hot springs!