In my memory, the evening of April 21, 2004 was overcast. The actual weather, probably a matter of record somewhere, is lost to me, but in my mind it could never be anything else. It’s one of the many small details about that day that have escaped me over the past two years.
I have forgotten who first told me about the accident or exactly when the details of it emerged. The lone, vivid memories I have come to me as a series of slideshow images of my little blue Civic approaching the small, steep hill at the end of Anderson Road, climbing, cresting to the sight of a nondescript policeman standing in the middle of the road, using a sweeping arm motion to bar my usual right turn. I looked at him a little inquisitively, pointing in the same direction he was; he must have noticed through the windshield because he nodded and pointed once more. I made the turn and took the long way home, the red glow of my dashboard lights making me feel more strung out than usual. With an accident that close to school, student involvement was a matter of cold, cruel probability.
It was actually five students, lacrosse players on their way to a game, who collided with a Verizon van they never saw coming. Information was slow in coming, and the flurry of news reports, phone calls and instant messages that night gave way to long days of tears, blank faces, quiet hallways then shock and outrage when local newscasters speculated about memorial plans for the five while they lay fighting for their lives. Solemnity remained even as good news trickled in as over the weeks and months, four of the five left the hospital. Only Brandon was left.
Brandon and I were friends in the ambiguous, undefined sense. We would say hi in the hallway, have brief locker-front conversations and eat lunch at the same table when our schedules coincided. I’m not sure we ever actually saw each other outside of school; we ran in different social circles and threw ourselves into different activities. He was the prototypical gentle giant, a serial smiler who wasn’t really intimidated by anyone. He held onto life in a coma until February, after we all had graduated and left for college, when there was nothing more that could be done.
I still have a few concrete memories of Brandon, like the time we got into a heated argument in English class over how much of a priority a cure for AIDS was. I still cringe when I remember that I called it a “luxury” because Africans would be the last people to actually receive it; Brandon was right to shoot me down even though most of the class agreed with me. I remember him telling wild jokes at lunch, getting his whole body into it in his excitement. Some days he would leave us crying from laughter, others he would end up ignored. I don’t have much memory of him ever being angry, though, and we all liked him in the long run. After lunch, the two of us and another friend used to walk outside in front of the school to get back to our class (technically forbidden), and I can still hear his voice from the one day he broke into an all-out sprint. “I’m faster than all of you! I’m faster than all of you! I’m soooooo slooooooow,” as we caught up to and passed him.
I couldn’t, or at any rate didn’t, make it home for the funeral. The night he died I did go to mass at Dahlgren, where for some sacred occasion the electric lights were turned off and the entire chapel was dimly lit by a mass of candles on the altar. It was an ominous setting for my imperfect vigil; the handful of other churchgoers were oblivious to it, and even the priest was unaware.
I don’t know what I thought going to mass would do for me or for Brandon; maybe I just felt it my duty to honor my fallen friend in some way. What I really wanted though, was an emotional purge, to feel the loss of Brandon deeply, to not worry anymore how close we really were. It never happened. Instead, I just sat there feeling uncomfortable, finding even prayer difficult with my head so clouded. I kept thinking about how I had never visited Brandon in the hospital, always too afraid, as if I were somehow going to intrude in a place that wasn’t mine.
And now I was missing the funeral, too. I get that same cloudiness in my head when I think of it now.This weekend, I’m going home to run in a memorial 5K to sponsor a scholarship in Brandon’s name. It’s my inappropriate, belated attempt to honor my friend. He probably would have done better for me.
