Farewell to a Friend

I found out earlier today that my old friend Andrew committed suicide last night, and naturally, I've been thinking about him all day. Andrew and I were classmates in high school and were nerds together in all the same honors and AP classes. He was very smart and funny--just an all-around interesting person.

We reconnected on facebook a couple of years ago and corresponded from time to time. I had no idea he was troubled, and based on what people have been posting all day on facebook, it sounds as though friends he kept in touch with on a more regular basis are as shocked as I was to hear the news. I guess we never truly know what's going on inside a person's head, and that's a scary thought.

I have lots of memories of Andrew. After all, we spent a good portion of every day together at school. What's funny are the kinds of memories that stand out. I will always remember the day in 9th grade in Mr. Roberts's honors geometry class when I was talking about my favorite novel, The Mists of Avalon, and Andrew said, "Oh, that's that feminist reworking of the Arthurian legend, right?" I very defensively said, "It's not feminist!" as though that were some sort of insult.

A few years later, when I was at Princeton, upon rereading the novel for the zillionth time, I had this epiphany that Andrew Carroll had been right--it really was a feminist novel! And then I remember wondering how on earth a 14-year-old boy had A) known that a book called The Mists of Avalon existed, B) known that the book was a feminist reworking of the Arthurian legend, and C) understood what feminism was. I then emailed Andrew at Duke to tell him that he'd been right all along.

Until now, I'd never known anyone who took his own life. It doesn't make any sense that I can still go to his facebook page and see things he posted just yesterday, as though nothing had been amiss. None of it makes sense. So goodbye, Andrew, my classmate and neighbor, my quiz bowl buddy, my Nat'l Merit cohort, my Shakespeare independent study partner--you will be missed.



The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.

Today, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.

Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields where glory does not stay,
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.

Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:

Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.

So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.

And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl's.
--A.E. Housman