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Location: Work.
Listening: "Jacksie" ~ Over The Rhine.

Today would have been my friend Ben's 26th birthday.

I can't remember when we became friends--some time in the fourth grade at St. George's--but we had gone to school together since first grade. He was one of the more visible boys--a leader in our grade of about 40 students, who wore a black trench coat, Chuck Taylor's, and JAMS (remember JAMS?) and sold Garbage Pail Kids cards in the woods behind the school (they had been declared contraband by the Headmaster). He was a prodigy, possessed of a natural talent for drawing and painting that stunned his teachers and earned him numerous awards while he was still in grade school. Years later, when I dated Brandon, another young artist who entered all of the same competitions, he would tell me that Ben was "the only one I could never beat.". Brandon had his first exhibit at the Brooks in Memphis when he was 16. He was convinced that Ben would have been there earlier.

Ben was my first actual crush--the first boy I ever really "like liked"--and we spent time doing what fifth graders who "like like" each other do: fighting. There were numerous face-off's, with the girls gathered around me and the boys around him, on the blacktop at recess. There were ambushes in the woods when the genders split again to play "war". There were the insulting notes passed back and forth in math class. There was the constant commentary on my glasses and how I was "way too smart for a girl". There were also impromptu drawing lessons, stories about surfing with his brother in Hawaii, and whispered explanations during chapel (he was Episcopalian; I had never heard of Lent).

For my eleventh birthday, he gave me a stuffed bunny. At the time, it was half my height, and my mother still has pictures of me staring at it in shock while Ben grins in the background. His mother later whispered to mine that he had known immediately what he wanted to get for me and had spent part of his allowance when he found it. The bunny is still with me. He resides on the top shelf in my closet with the other stuffed animals, the worse for wear after 14 years, but still in one piece. I've never lived anywhere without him.

On the last day of school, in May of 1987, our grade had the customary party in the morning and then met briefly with Father Rafter, our religion teacher, before heading home. During the party, our homeroom teachers had asked where we'd all thought of going for middle school. Ben had turned to me and said "If you promise to go to Hutchison, then I'll promise to go to MUS. That way we can be next door to each other." I laughed and said I would think about it. We sat next to each other during Father Rafter's brief sermon on the value of rest from one's studies. When we were dismissed, everyone made straight for the door--except for Ben, who lingered behind, asking Father Rafter questions about the afterlife. "I mean--what do you think heaven is supposed to look like?" Father Rafter shook his head and smiled. "I'm afraid I couldn't begin to tell you, Ben. Perhaps you should try to draw it." I waited for them for a few moments and then turned to the door.

Ben died in a car accident three weeks later. His family was returning home from a cousin's wedding in Canada when a semi slid into their car on a wet highway in Arkansas. I remember every detail of that day, but I won't put it down here just now. His funeral procession is still one of the longest Memphis has ever seen; there were over 100 cars travelling from the service at St. George's to Memorial Park. At the cemetery, a pretty blonde girl came up to me. "Are you Leigh?" I nodded. It was Charlotte, Ben's mythical older sister, who had gone away to college in Vancouver. She was hugging me and sobbing. "I know he probably never told you this, but you meant a lot to him. He talked about you all the time...".

From that day on, my mother and I took flowers to Ben's grave twice every year--once on June 12th (the day that he died) and once on October 25th (the day he was born). When I went to college, she continued to go, calling me at the end of the day to tell me what sort of flowers she had selected, how peaceful that particular area still was, how she couldn't believe that it had been so many years. She finally stopped last year, on what would have been his 25th birthday. She said she felt like it was time. I agreed. June 12th and October 25th are still thoughtful days for me, flowers or no.

I've lost touch with Ben's family over the years. His mother and his older brother were both critically injured in the accident (the doctors were apparently stunned when his mother survived), and spent years recovering, physically. His father, who had opted to stay in Canada for a few more days and then fly home, withdrew almost completely. The family moved from their old house within a year or two of the accident and then left Memphis to return to Canada not long after that. Part of me occasionally longs to find them. Part of me is afraid that it would hurt more than help to do so. I don't know.

When you're eleven years old, you're not thinking about living, much less dying. Ben's death forced me to be conscious of every moment, every possibility--it, essentially, made me realize that life in and of itself is a luxury. It moved me to to be the shoulder that my friends could cry on, to think about the repercussions of how I treated others, and to try to learn as much as I could while I could. In a very cliched way, I "grew up" almost overnight.

This entry is not as profound or as polished as I would like it to be, but for now, it's the best that I can do. I loved someone. I lost him. I hope to see him again one day. Today would have been his 26th birthday. I like to think that we would have still been friends.