Unconnected

On two, extremely different, notes.

Last night this was my Facebook status:
"Raise your hand if you just saw a pants-less man (in all his balls and penis glory) in the back of your hotel's well-lit, well-traveled parking lot! (I AM RAISING MY HAND)."

And, completely unrelated, today marks the 12th year since Carter Waghorne, a friend from high school, died. I haven't had the same kind of time to reflect on what this means as I have had in years past, and maybe it's not necessary to try to glean any new meaning out of the tragedy. But I still note this day and remember those with whom I grieved, and I hope that no one is offended that I'm remembering Carter's death right after mentioning a pants-less man.

Reunion Part 1

While the majority of reunion activities weren't going to begin until Saturday, there was a dance choreographed in honor of Carter Waghorne on Friday that I felt I should attend. An evening of drinks and conversation was also scheduled for the class of '99. So I wasn't the only one showing up on George School's campus a little earlier than absolutely necessary. J.D. flew into Philly on Thursday and stayed at my place for the night before going up to Newtown earlier Friday morning...which was nice because then I knew that at least one person I knew would be on campus when I arrived. This worked out well, as he was speaking to R. (a G.S. teacher and friend) in a central location. This location worked out well as J. arrived with her two kids. I did an awkward uncomfortable dance for the first two hours of my time on campus, itching to leave or hide or something. But this is, I think, natural, and it faded a little as the hours went by.
And then N. and L. arrived.
And hugging was all around.
The numbers grew as the dance's time approached and we all moved on over to the memorial seating area built in Carter's honor.
A. and N. all seeing each other for the first time in forever.
The dance itself was a little less than stellar. It did not evoke any real emotions in me...and after speaking to a few other friends I feel relieved to know that I wasn't alone in this lack of connection. When the dance ended, those of us who had assembled to see it stood around on Red Square for a while, chatting it up and whatnot. Here is a colorful photograph of J.D. and myself.
And that ends the first part of my high school reunion story.

I Remember

I google searched Carter Waghorne. I put his name in quotes and then I took his name out of quotes. I added the name of the high school he and I both attended. We were both members of the class of 1999. We went to a small Quaker boarding school outside of Philadelphia. Its name was George School. We were both boarding students, he was from Texas and I was from Maryland. One of my freshmen roommates came from Maine, the other from Trevose, Pennsylania . Other girls in my dorm were from Ohio, the Bronx, Princeton and Mexico. There were twenty-eight boarding girls and, I would assume, a rough approximate of that number of boarding boys. The total number of students at the school, including day students, was approximately 525.

There aren't that many direct hits in all the combinations I searched. A few were on George School's website and those that did pop up were quick references, a mention of Carter or his parents in the online copy of The Georgian, our alumni magazine. When I google image searched his name nothing of any relevance came up at all. If I searched for Carter on Friendster or MySpace or Facebook I would not find him. I might find twenty, or so, other Carter Waghornes in England or Canada or Texas or Missouri but the Carter Waghorne I am searching for, his face and location, would not come up. No matter how many pages I scrolled through.

It will be ten years today. Ten years since the day Carter died. Or the day after Carter died. To be honest I'm not sure which one is more important for me: the date he died or the first full day after learning about it. Ten years and I have started to imagine or wonder what kind of results would have surfaced on the internet, if Carter hadn't died. He would have been twenty seven. I still have a hard time thinking of guys my age as men, but, well, that's what he would have been: a man.

Carter was a blonde boy from Texas. That's what I thought about him when I was a freshmen. As the time went on I could add more descriptive words to him but, at the base of it, that is what Carter will always be in my eyes. We were in hydrology together our freshmen year and, even then, he had this husky voice with just a little drawl to it. This god awfully short hair cut. Very preppy.

Carter died of meningococcal meningitis. The day after his death those of us who had close contact with him in the last days of his life were required to take pills to make sure that we didn't contract the disease ourselves. One friend was hesitant to take the pills. I recall her saying that she wouldn't want to destroy something that was a part of Carter. No, she didn't say it exactly like that but I was sixteen and that's the best I can remember. A side effect of the drug was a noticeable darkening of urine, ranging from a deep orange to rust red. The school had procedures for boarding students sleeping off campus. They needed our parents' permission (either in written or verbal form) and the assurance that an adult would be at the house where we would be sleeping. I believe that the deans slightly suspended those rules for us. Filling one, maybe two, vans with a collection of Carter's closest friends and driving us to Princeton, where B's parents lived. There was a stop at a grocery store where they loaded us up with snacks and non-alcoholic beverages and dropped us off. Technically there was an adult in B's four story mansion of a house (her parents were out of town and the man was either house-sitting or watching after B's little sister), but we never saw him. It was at that house that we stayed up late, attempting to process the fact that this boy we had known was gone forever. We all pissed into the same toilet bowl without flushing (whose idea this was I don't know, I believe we thought of it as an experiment), thus my knowledge of the range of colors the medication could make. That night I did not sleep. We all stayed up late but eventually most everyone went to sleep. I did not. I smoked contraband cigarettes and took a walk on Princeton's new morning streets. It was a furtive walk and I did not walk far, for fear of getting lost or caught.

Would he be married by now, I wonder? Most of us are not, but a few of us are. Would he have gone to an East Coast college? Or would he have returned home to Texas? In high school he had two girl friends, both beautiful slender brunettes. Would he have married another in that mold? Would they have children? Would he come to our five year or ten year reunion? He had a wonderful laugh, Carter did. I can imagine a room full of the class of 1999 and hearing it through the crowd and walking in that direction. He would hug me and ask after me and I would ask after him. We'd make a few jokes. He would tell me about his college years and new job and (if this was our five year reunion) I would ask him how much money he made per year before telling him how much I made (less than $15,000--this was not about bragging). He would introduce me to his wife, or he would be alone and I would wonder a moment why I never had a crush on him.

I am sifting through my memories, trying to find enough I haven't already written or spoken of countless times before. I find new ones, but so small, more like fragments of fuller moments of time. Meeting him in the post office, junior year, and talking about magazines. He once said I had curves in a way that didn't make me feel chubby. I still have the dress I was wearing when he said that, casually, in the midst of a circling conversation with others on a bench outside. Carter in Debbie Dimicco's French 3 class. I can never remember his exact nature in that class, just Debbie's exasperation with him. He loved the language but….but what? But he came late to class? But he talked when he should have been listening? Yes, probably those things and more. But Debbie loved him as much as she was frustrated by him. A specific Hawaiian shirt he wore, a lot, that last year is more vivid to me than any of the tee shirts or button downs he may have worn during our freshmen year.

At our school we had study hall for two hours each evening, after which we were allowed half an hour to go outside and socialize before checking into our dorms for the night. The last time I saw Carter was during this half hour period of time. I was having a hard time of things that night. Carter came up to me and hugged me, something he made a point of doing because I always seemed so uncomfortable about it. Let me specify that he didn't hug me to make me uncomfortable but, rather, because he thought (rightfully so) that I shouldn't feel that way. So he hugged me and, in that deep voice, said he felt sick. I was impatient, having my own small emotional crisis, and told him to go to the nurse's if he felt bad. I went towards the post office and I have no idea where he went next. I know he didn't go to the infirmary. By the same time, the next night, Carter was in the hospital. He may have already died. I think that's true. I remember sitting on a bench with E. and J. and seeing Jim Grumbach, a dean, walking towards the auditorium-where a good number of Carter's close friends were rehearsing for a play. Shakespeare, I think it was. And this is not me revising a memory, this is true: I knew when I saw that man walking to the play rehearsals, that he was going to go break the news. I am too rational a person to blame myself, or anyone else, for what happened but, at the same time, I can't help but wish that I was some kind of psychic-that I could have known that he was more than just sick and that I would insist on walking him to the infirmary and that the nurses would also have some kind of second sight and know that his aching body was more than a flu symptom.

There is a monument at George School to Carter. A horseshoe shaped bench of sorts made of brick and concrete, with two shelves for optimum sitting capacity. In the center there is a plaque. On it are the imprints of bare feet and a haiku. A haiku a number of us wrote collaboratively, using an ancient ancestor of google chat. Last month an email circulated amongst some of us who attended that strange session: 15 or so teenagers typing to each other, occasionally laughing or sniffling, but not talking directly to one another: given the task of finding words to represent how we were feeling and who Carter was. It was an email about time changing, how this date (or yesterday's date) was always remembered but as our lives change…as we grow up…it's harder to commemorate it properly. One email was from A. He now teaches at George School and he shared the fact that the monument, meant to sit on, now is referred to as 'The CW'. There was another smaller memorial on our campus for another boy who died too soon while attending the school. I always passed it and wondered what that was like for his friends and parents. Then I found out. But the boy himself and the exact impact of his death was abstracted and hidden from me and, of course, it's no different for Carter. Kids drape themselves on one another and that bench, involved in their own small dramas, understanding the concept of Carter's death but not that he was a real boy. That the bare foot print is a direct reference to Carter's tendency, especially Junior year, to go around without shoes on his feet (in another email I've received the reason for the barefeet has been qualified: that Carter said he thought better when he wasn't wearing shoes).

We were not the best of friends. I feel a fraud, often enough, when I write or speak of him, as if I don't have as much of a right. I had to call one of Carter's closer friends, W, who had gone to George School through our sophomore year but left after that. I still remember how excited and surprised she was to hear from me, it was the middle of the afternoon and she wondered how I could have possibly known she was at home. She started to say why it was she was home and I cut her off. I cut off her excitement and pleasure at hearing my voice and told her that a boy she had known was dead. I also remember calling my parents and my mother making an innocent comment about the boy who died. Perhaps this is the root of why I feel a fraud, that my mother didn't understand that he was my friend.

Technology has surpassed Carter's existence. I understand why there are only references to Carter's death on the internet, he didn't live long enough to have his name pop up in any other context. But I do like to imagine his MySpace page:

Photographs of him with his Texan friends, on vacation somewhere snowy. Or a shot of him with his arms enveloping a girl and kissing the top of her head. Or a smiling Carter, in a cap and gown, with his parents and brothers around him. A few shots of him, blurry eyed and holding a big glass of beer, smiling dangerously. Perhaps there would be a cheesy poem of his own making, or a very good poem. A song or two from our friend A's new album, playing in the background. I would not hesitate to add him to my friends, to keep track of him as I do so many others from that time. Glad to know that he was doing well, alive and happy.
---

This is a piece I will be filling in for a while to come, I think.

Please go here and listen to It's Fine To Lie.
You could also go here and read a more put together piece I wrote ten years ago.

--
I've been thinking about what is missing from this. Mainly the grief. Our actions that night, when each hall of girls and boys was gathered together by their hall teacher and told the news. My own inability to sleep. The dreams we all eventually had, vivid dreams with a very living Carter wondering what all the fuss was about. The fact that at that time French exchange students were on campus. Sitting on Main Dorm's front porch with L and A, A singing a little song her voice trembling. The meetings for worship. The occasional laughter. The more frequent tears. The homework we didn't care about. The classes we still attended. I remember going to collection (our 15 minute equivalent of homeroom) and waiting for E to appear. E, who had been so close to Carter. I remember not knowing what I could possibly say to her, so hugging her instead of saying any thing. That night, I think, J. and I went home with E. A strange threesome, having never really socialized that much together outside classrooms. Where were E.'s closer girl friends? Why didn't J. stay in the boys' dorm? My writing the linked above little piece about the loss that same night we learned the news. What else could I do? Then, not even putting my name on it, walking to the dean's office the next morning and handing it to someone. I have been told, accurately or not, that it was read at Carter's funeral. This may not be true. I didn't go. This is one thing I regret. I could have asked my parents or somehow gotten there but, even then, I felt removed from the others. Of course, in some ways, we all felt removed from one another. While, paradoxically, we came together. I don't think about the school community as a whole. I think of the large number of us who had all loved Carter. We were made so aware, at a younger age than many, what the loss of a friend feels like. I listened to Terri Gross interview Phillip Roth a few years back. He was talking about aging and how we try to prepare ourselves for the loss of our parents but that we don't really think, even at 70 or whatever, about losing our friends. The loss of Carter made all the friendships more precious. And then there are more memories of him than the five or six I've mentioned. He and L dressed up for the Junior prom, he in a slightly 1970s suit and she with her 1920s flapper hair. More, more, more.

Something Else

So yesterday was the day I always associate with a friend of mine, Carter Waghorne, dying my junior year of high school. It was sudden and it was terrible and though time has definitely passed I still think of his death more often than once a year (by that I mean that I don't go a whole year without thinking about him and then suddenly this date pops up and I go 'oh yeah that happened' ). It was an event in my life that shaped the way I thought about friendship and tragedy and the sometimes terrible nature of life. I'd rather not make too many comparisons about what happened yesterday since that would seem rather, um, direspectful and stupid. But I did, on the train this early morning, read about some of the details of the Virginia shootings and tear up just thinking about how individuals in that specific community must be feeling and will continue to feel in the coming weeks, months and years. I can't imagine having to grieve while, simultaneously, there are a million cameras trained on your every tear, your every embrace. I have no photographs of Carter, or at least not digital ones and could find none online...the closest I could get was this photograph of the "memorial seating area" built in his honor at my high school. At the risk of embarassing myself or making anyone uncomfortable I am going to include the short piece I wrote the night I, and everyone else, learned he died. It's a bit saccharine and it's not all that great but it represents an important period in my life where, when faced with nastiness, the only thing I knew to do was write and, more importantly, I believe that, even now, it captures just a little bit of how (you know what, I don't know how to end this sentence so I'm not):

We awaited the news, on benches, in rooms, on beds, in the grass, alone, or huddled in groups, we waited, and we waited, afraid to voice what we didn't want to hear. And as we sat talking about things that weren't on our minds, working around the word death, a man walked hurriedly through our groups, with a purpose all his own, and I saw him, and knew what we didn't speak, and our conversation without meaning continued, as his presence filled my mind. And soon it came to be time to hear what none of us were ready to accept, and as we heard it, our tears came. The tears welled up, coming from so deep inside we didn't even realize we had them, after hours of denial and analyzation of the events, we were faced with the finale and reality we strived to escape. We cried, and we cried. And every new face, with their fresh tears, reminded us once more of the truth, and our tears would spring anew, with a vengeance and force surprising us all.

"I thought I was all cried out."

Memories began to fly through the air with such speed, we were afraid we wouldn't be able to fill the rooms fast enough.
He held my hand.
He hugged me when I was down.
He took showers five minutes before class.
He ran barefoot.
He always gave.
He danced.
His laugh filled a room.
He was the only person I would let sit next to me in French.
He was a friend.

"He could die, but he won't...he can't"

And as reality seeps in we go to our respective places of solace, and wait for the waves of inevitable grief to ebb. There is nothing that can make this easy, many of us have things we wish we could have said, and still more things we wish we hadn't said, and all we can hope for is that he knew this, he felt this, and that we can allow ourselves forgiveness for our discrepancies. Facing up to it is not a five hour process, nor a week process, this is something that will take time, we cannot push it aside.

"Was he in pain?"

As the thoughts go circling in my head, like so many others, I cry. I wish I could say something inspirational, uplifting, and strong, but what can I say to soften an absence like this? I will miss him, and his funny little jokes, and odd spontaneous actions. I will remember his smile, his voice, his presence, his love of music, and his love of people. I haven't taken it in yet, the finality of it all, it was too soon, and none of us were prepared. And all we can do is be there for each other, hug each other, look out for each other, let the emotions come, let the feelings out. Mourn in whatever way is best for you, go to a friend, or go on a walk by yourself, do what's right for you, take a big breath and remember.


All I can say is that Carter will be missed. He was loved, and we can never forget all he gave to us, and all he had left to give.

"I wasn't ready for him to go."