Jay Elias | You can take it with you

"I have wasted Time, and now doth
Time waste me"
- Richard II

2002-02-12- 1:03 p.m.

Shuvah

I was so excited that morning. It was going to be about as great of a weekend as I could remember having. Lynn would be coming up the next day, to spend Valentine’s Day with me, and I had already done my shopping and picked out some great presents. But best of all, SHG was coming down, and would be there for four days. I had only seen him once since he had to leave school, when Lynn and I drove the five hours to Providence at two in the morning when he called me from the emergency room.
Things just hadn’t been the same since SHG left. He was my shadow, my doppelganger, the Athos to my d’Artagnan. With both him and Lynn gone, it simply wasn’t the college I had gone to for the last two and a half years.
So their coincidental visits made me feel that it was all coming back, and I couldn’t wait for that to happen. I spent the morning marinating sun-dried tomatoes in garlic, rosemary and olive oil; SHG was as huge a fan of food as one could be, and shared my passion for them. SHG, Khalid and I were going to have a huge reunion dinner at my apartment that night, a boy’s night in before Lynn showed up and had to share in the festivities.
Khalid and I took a Power Politics class in the Olin building together; SHG was supposed to meet us on the building steps at six o’clock when the class let out and they we would all go over to my apartment together. I remember hardly being able to sit still during the class; I was staring at the clock, counting off each minute as it passed.

With about one hour left to go in the class, a school security guard arrived at our classroom. I remember being scared at first; all of the fallout from the events of the past December was still fresh in my mind. He entered the class, and asked the professor if Khalid and I could come with him.
We were so puzzled at first. We joked as we walked towards the dean’s building; laughing, we wondered what it was we could have done that we would both be caught for at once. We laughed and laughed, all the way into the dean’s office.
We sat down next to each other on the couch facing his desk. The sun was pouring in the window, lighting up specks of dust in the air like tiny gnats trapped in amber floating. It was so bright and beautiful out that afternoon, a chill February in the Hudson Valley. In the morning, the frost on the ground crunched underneath your feet.
He spoke to us, softly and kindly. That afternoon, SHG had been driving from Providence to us. He was on a two-lane road, headed south, when another car had pulled out in front of him. He hit the brakes, and slid on a patch of ice. He slowed down as the car spun into the opposing lane. A car coming from the other direction hit him broadside on the passenger side. But his early nineties model Ford Escort wagon had a structural defect. The car was crushed. At its narrowest point, the car collapsed to a width of twenty-three inches. Shafts of steel lacerated his kidneys and liver. But they said that even failing that, that his head was crushed against the driver’s side window. There had been nothing the paramedics had been able to do.
He had been killed.
I just sat there. The moment the dean said those words, I could feel the impact against my shoulder of Khalid’s massive, 240-pound frame slamming against my shoulder. A moment later, I could feel his tears, hot and wet, against me, seeping through my sweater and into my skin. I sat there, impassive. Words wouldn’t come. Tears wouldn’t come.
Slowly, security guards brought in Sean and others of our friends. The dean didn’t repeat his speech again; everyone came in and saw Khalid crying on my shoulder, and then I told them blankly what had happened. I don’t know how long we spent in that room. Some days, I feel like we’re still in there.
When we left the dean’s office, the sky was beginning to grow purple with darkness of impending night. I took out my cell phone and called Lynn, who wasn’t home. I left her a message and told her what happened. I went home, and we all parted, going off to our own rooms.
I walked into my apartment. There, on the kitchen table, staring at me, was the bowl, filled with olive oil, and the sun-dried tomatoes. They looked like peeled scabs, lying there. I just sat there and stared at them.
It didn’t make sense then, and makes no more now.
His mother called me from the police station. The funeral was to be in two days, by Jewish tradition, in Providence. I told her not to worry, that we would all be there. She said that his sisters didn’t think they’d be able to speak. She asked me if I would give the eulogy. I said I would be honored to.
It helped, having something to do.
As the night wore on, Khalid and Sean and more of our friends gathered in my apartment. We all got drunk, and we told stories and laughed together. We made reservations to stay at a Holiday Inn, and my parents said they would pay for it, whatever it cost. When we had all gathered, and we were planning our mass road trip, I caught myself thinking, “It’s a shame SHG’s missing this. He would have had a really good time.”
Things change so quickly. Just that morning, he’d been alive and happy to be on his way to visit me. That was all I thought about, as I lay awake in bed, and the day passed, and the beginning of my life without him commenced.
September 23, 1975 – February 12, 1998

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Doesn't Take Much and That's Messed Up - 2004-03-15
Like Water Under Bridges - 2003-09-08
Jesus On The Dashboard - 2003-08-13
An Administrative Announcement - 2003-08-11
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