Coming Clean

So, for the first time, someone younger than me, who I have known, has died. I didn’t know him much as an adult – I just knew him as a kid. From what I know of his adulthood, I’m going to keep remembering him as a kid … because when we talked in recent years, it was as two kids catching up. And, from what I’m gathering, that’s the good part of him that persevered in between his suffering and abandonment … a kid just wanting to be free, to be at ease and enjoy life, to share with folks that part of him that was happy.

What sucks worst about all of this is that it could have been avoided. He was, from what I can gather, still under his parents roof. He had suffered visibly in front of them for years. He had undergone counseling for his demons. Yet the real support he needed at home – the removal of any semblance of a stumbling stone – was ignorantly and somewhat selfishly neglected.

To be sure, his absence is mourned … his premature mortal end is agonized … but I wonder if anything has really been learned in all of this. Wounds I had not known lie monstrously before me, and they do not look to be mending. His tale may not be the last in his family. His family needs more prayers than I could ever give. Please remember them, if you will.

I don’t pretend to know where my young friend is destined. I very well do know what and why people would say different things. But, more importantly, I know he’s in good hands now … and however that will pan out is between them just as it always has been.

My prayers go with him. My prayers petition for him. My prayers encourage him. May you be at peace, my young friend.