“The good die first. And they whose hearts are dry as summer dust burn to the socket.”
I was 17 the first time I remember someone I would call family or friend died. There were others who had passed away before that, but they weren’t people I knew. Both of my paternal grandparents died before I was born and one of great aunts on that side of the family died when I was 8 or 9. Aside from them, though, the first death I remember of a person I had actually interacted with was my 93-year-old great grandmother who died in 1967.
With the exception of a 16-year-old cousin who died in 1981 of a terminal disease, I was in my late 30s before I lost even much older relatives. Grandparents and parents passed, none of them younger than 80s or 90s.
But it was 2016 when things started getting depressing. One of my closest friends in the world, someone a year younger than me, suffered a cerebral hemorrage and died several weeks later. I flew from Atlanta to Denver and back, all within 24 hours, to attend his funeral.
My friend Tom was just shy of his 65th birthday when he died. I had known him since he was 14 and he was the first of my friends to die.
Brandt Heatherington was the second.
Brandt was more than a decade younger than me, a fraternity brother from George Mason who came through our chapter after me. We became acquainted through Facebook and through alumni activities.
He was a wonderful guy, and the last time I saw him in person was October 2017 at a fraternity golf tournament.
Three years later I was undergoing one of the toughest times of my life. My wife was in the hospital recuperating from a perforated intestine that had to be repaired by a colostomy. She came close to dying, and was only a couple of days from returning home. As soon as I felt at the prospect of that, I got a shock when I came home and went on Facebook.
My friend Brandt had died unexpectedly.
I hadn’t been aware of it, but Brandt had several chronic conditions that eventually had caused his death.
The picture above was Brandt reading to young children at the Read Across America day, something I had done several times 20 years earlier when I was a newspaper columnist. It’s a wonderful thing to be able to bring the joy of reading to children, and Brandt iknew that.
It’s been three years and a day since he died and I still miss him.
I have reached an age where life takes away more than it gives, but I am older than all my close friends except one, so it’s entirely possible that one of these times, I will be the one taken away.
Life certainly is a strange old thing.