Gone

I'm nearly 27 years old and have been blessed to be virtually untouched by death. All four of my grandparents and the rest of my immediate family members are alive and well. My parents are young and healthy. Two people from my high school class have passed away, both from cancer, and both tragic, but it was a class of 1,000 people and I didn't know either very well.

I just found out that a friend and fellow law school classmate died today in a snowmobiling accident. UChicago is a small school and I knew everyone in my class, most of them well. Grant was someone I knew well. He had the locker below me and for three years I saw him every day.

He was 29. He was brilliant, witty, kind, and possessed a biting sense of humor. He had the best gchat away messages. He'd share links to obscure and funny blog posts, relay conversations with partners, make fun of something he'd recently said or did at work, or just write a sound-bite so funny and smart that I'd marvel at how he came up with his material. I haven't seen him since graduation, but those messages frequently prompted me to write back and we'd chat for a few minutes every couple of days. It sounds superficial, but the idea that I won't see any more of those messages keeps making me cry. Maybe it's just because that's all I can process. My classmate can't possibly be gone, but I can grasp that his away messages are.

Grant is someone my mind went to often. About 18 months ago we were chatting about politics when he mentioned that he'd seen my recently posted pictures of Landon from Halloween. Grant was gay, single, and as far as I could tell not particularly interested in children, but he complimented my adorable little dragon and said that even though most of his friends' kid-centric facebook pages annoyed him, mine didn't. When I thanked him, rather surprised by his remark, he said,

"You wear motherhood very well
you make it look attractive"

And I think that's one of the nicest things anyone has ever said to me. Maybe because it came right at that turning point in my relationship with motherhood when I found that I enjoyed it for itself and not just for Landon, or maybe it just meant more coming from Grant- someone who wasn't a close friend and whose life seemed so very different from my own, but it's stuck in my head and I suddenly felt a need to write it down.



I don't know what to say. I thought writing would help. It hasn't. I just can't believe someone my age, one of my favorite people and personalities- someone with such a bright future is gone just like that. I don't know what to do with that knowledge except sit here feel the weight of its truth.

(2/22: Thank you for all your comments; they've meant a lot to me.)