Remembering an Old Friend

 

It's been nearly three months since the phone call came. It was near dawn and the phone ringing scared me out of the room and into the kitchen to answer it. The walk seemed endless, the phone must have rung more times than can ever be counted, and yet I know it was just a matter of seconds. The voice on the other end of the phone was crisp, clear, obviously not a prank of some half-drunk friend. No, it was clear, “Wake up,!”she demanded. “I’ve got bad news.” Then her voice broke. I thought, who's been hurt, her dad, a friend in the house? Never did it occur to me that this tragedy could be so terrible. She paused, “are you awake?” she asked. “What's wrong?” I asked. “Steve's been killed.”. Suddenly the shock sunk deep into my heart. I muttered some words and asked a few questions, but while much was said, little could penetrate through the barrier, the chill that was creeping up my body. Then she said “come down now’, and I stumbled out some words until finally realizing I needed to get away, to see someone, to be with friends, and maybe work out this pain that had gripped my heart.

It was 5:00 AM, should I sleep or call someone... instead I thumbed through a few albums. Jackson Browne, for a dancer comes to mind. I listen, and listen again, and again and finally the words sink in...

               “I don’t Remember losing track of you, you were always dancing in and out of youth, I must have thought you'd always be around. Always keeping things real by playing the ‘clown period now you're nowhere to be found.”

Steve Acheson. And from that moment his name would be etched into my mind, echoing again and again like a needle stuck on a phonograph. A dreamer, a doer, a man, and just beginning to explore his dreams, his actions and his maturity. I met him early in my sophomore year. I remember the encounter well; athletic, intelligent, handsome, and yet polite, courteous and emitting a certain essence that makes you jealous one human being could have so many gifts at once. An awesome first impression, and yet one that was only affirmed and strengthened in time. Steven Walter Acheson

I remember his smile, his humor, his warmth and more than anything else, I remembered how much he cared for others. We talk often with the topics ranging from English to football, pledge ship to life dot dot he loved his family and helped his friends when he saw others not enjoying what he loved, he wondered why. His was a world of dreams. It was possible to change the things around you, if you cared enough that is.

There was a 2 hour wait at work just to get my bearings straight. I arrived 2 hours before anyone else at work, but I couldn't stay at home. Just being there seemed to give me some security. I knew where I had to be, only I had responsibilities. They seemed trivial, and yet I had to hold on to reality. O'Hare airport. I'd been there 100 times, today it seemed empty. There was a page on a loudspeaker for coach Lou Henson. Little did I know it was a message from his wife informing him of this very accident with news that Kevin Bontemps, one of his players, had been in the accident as well but had escaped unharmed.

Finally, Champaign. Nez and Porst are at the airport. Not much was said. Flowers in the foyer. It was real, my hopes of awakening from this nightmare ended. The pain in my heart grew deeper.

I thought back to a month earlier.  3:00 AM and there he was waiting for me. Feeling the night’ socializing and the days long drive catches up with me.  “I'm an IFC,” he said and on 2 committees... you'd be proud!” I always was Steve; I always was...

2 months earlier. Hell week ends and his week-long partners are enjoying their deserved splendors. He finds me walking between here and wherever. There was a firm handshake, then words of praise, and then a hug... It had it had been almost nine months since we stood in the entryway at Phi Kappa Psi and I fumbled the pledge pin a few times until I finally worked the clasp into place... tomorrow he would be a brother.

               “I don't know what happens when people die, can't seem to grasp it as hard as I try. It's like a song I can hear playing right in my ear, that I can't sing, but I can't help listening.”

The family was shattered and yet somehow managed to hold on to the strength all of us had always looked to them for. Steve was the family, like Suzanne, and Bill had been the family before him. There was an empty place at the table. And no one knew quite how to fill it. Even they sense the lack of reality, and then they too started feeling the pain as the numbness began to wear off. Their pain throbbed and no one could bring Steve back to soothe at all.

He was studying one night when I barged in and dragged him to the snack bar to talk. Suzanne had called me and asked that I help him work out this depression that had recently overcome him. Over a greasy cheeseburger and a coke, we talked about his adjustment to life. I think he realized something that frustrates many of the dreamers in the world... not everyone gets enthused about your dreams. His lesson, dream your own dreams, make them happen, and enjoy them as they go by, and then, dream again.

The funeral only began to touch on his life, and what he had given so many others. There were hundreds there, lines around the block, all stunned, all silent. We all thought so young, so tragic... we knew we had each lost a piece of our lives and a place in our hearts. It was if the glimmer of hope that races around inside of us, the dreamer, had died. If God took one of the best, how could the rest of hope to do better. 

I cried when I heard Steve pledged. I had never done that before for a new pledge and would never again. Steve was different though. In the two years I'd come to know him he had become a friend. Somehow, he was the younger brother I never had, and now he was a pledge. I knew I had handled them right. I was criticized for being too fair. But I answered all of his questions as honestly as I could, a practice all too uncommon in fraternity rush, but most of all I treated him like I wished I had been treated. I remember the late night at the Round Robin. One last attempt to sway him before rush. His mother would say later I overdid it, I was being too fair, but there was no room for error. And when he pledged, I cried.

The burial. I didn't hear the minister. I didn't have to. I knew the words all too well. My mother's death suddenly came back to me. Once again, I felt the emptiness, the pain, the sorrow and the confusion I had felt before from someone else I had loved died.  I knew these words … “Ashes to ashes dust to dust...” Then words I didn't know, the fraternity ritual. There was a flower from each brother, and then a pause, and Jim and Bill broke off their own fraternal offering from the bouquet at the base of the wooden casket. A son, a brother, a friend, we would all miss his love.

               “I can't help feeling stupid standing around. Crying is the easier down. But I know he'd rather we were dancing, dancing our sorrows away.”

Jackson Browne