Tuesday, May 25, 2010
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)
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