A Passing Sense of Magic

“There’s a standard story. Almost a script now, after so many years, but still a story then. The confusion, chaos, uncertainty, fear, running, screaming, searching, calling out. Being found, being lost. The numbness and the rain and the lights and the insensitivity. So much so fast.

"Then I told him about other things, things that happened before. My Subway sandwich disappearing and Rachel being so upset. The expressive way she spoke – so expressive that it literally blew her skirt off. Her speech piece about having sex with a piece of toast. That she had been liked by everyone but her family until after her death. At least, that’s what we thought. That I had lost it at her funeral and laughed and laughed as they played the theme from Titanic, her most-hated song. And that she had been friends with the boy who had a hand in killing her. That he wasn’t a monster until that day.
And that I hadn’t just lost her, I had lost him. And, while I got to say goodbye to Rachel, Dylan had been buried without any friends near him. I had betrayed him, and in the process, I had betrayed something inside myself.”

—Devon Adams
September 30, 2008 

A Passing Sense of MagicBy

Miss Dev

Tue Sep 30, 2008 1:26 PM

I lost Rachel when I was 16-years-old. Torn out of my life like, suddenly, cruelly, irreversibly. No more laughter in the dark theatre, no more ridiculously silly situations.

I visited her often. I visited her until they closed off the back access to the cemetery and I couldn’t bear to drive past "Baby Land” any longer. The day I graduated high school, I stopped and left her my program.

I don’t remember the occasion nor the day of the week. I can’t recall if it was sunny or cloudy, warm or cold. I think was autumn – but I remember leaves on the trees.

I was sitting on Rachel’s grave, telling her all of the things that I couldn’t tell to anyone else. Filling her in on the gossip. Pretending, for myself more than for her, that she was still alive. In my peripheral, a man lingered. I was always cautious when people approached these two isolated graves. I didn’t trust them. Often they were tourists intent on experiencing something of the more gruesome part of our history, or our story here. And when they weren’t tourists and they lurked, as this man was lurking, they were media, thirty to capture some untold story. As if any of our stories remain untold. I touched the card I laid against Rachel’s gravestone (so it must of been August, her birth month) and stood.

He addressed me first. He asked if I had known her. There’s no reason to lie – especially not when one is so close to death.

“Yes.”
He nodded.
“Did you?” It wasn’t meant to be hostile, but I held an irrational protectiveness over my friend’s grave site.
“No. No, I did not.”
Then why are you here? I didn’t ask it, but he answered anyway.
I just don’t remember his answer.

But it must have satisfied me because I stayed. He asked where the teacher was buried, so I led him up the small hill to the bench marking the his resting place. We looked down over Rachel and the other student’s grave. The grass looked vibrantly green that day. It must have been cloudy else the grass would not been so stunning.

What made me open up to him? Seasoned from (one may say too) many interviews with the police, FBI, private investigators, the media, film writers, counselors, family, friends… I was used to being honest about it. About it all. No, not all. Omission is a form of dishonesty in some cases, in this it was a form of survival.

I had my wall. The things I spoke about, horrific, terrifying, sorrowful things I had created a fortress for where they could reside and I could visit them when I needed to, but I could check my emotions at the door. These were things that had happened to me, that was fact. I’ve found it’s often harder for others to connect with a story when one inserts very personal emotions into it. So I don’t. My emotions, my pain, my tears… those were things that others didn’t need to be privy to, so I stashed them away for a rainy day.

I think there were thunder clouds in the sky.

We sat. He may have asked me questions, I don’t recall. I don’t know if he pried or if I just told him what I thought he’d like to know.

There’s a standard story. Almost a script now, after so many years, but still a story then. The confusion, chaos, uncertainty, fear, running, screaming, searching, calling out. Being found, being lost. The numbness and the rain and the lights and the insensitivity. So much so fast.

Then I told him about other things, things that happened before. My Subway sandwich disappearing and Rachel being so upset. The expressive way she spoke – so expressive that it literally blew her skirt off. Her speech piece about having sex with a piece of toast. That she had been liked by everyone but her family until after her death. At least, that’s what we thought. That I had lost it at her funeral and laughed and laughed as they played the theme from Titanic, her most-hated song. And that she had been friends with the boy who had a hand in killing her. That he wasn’t a monster until that day. And that I hadn’t just lost her, I had lost him. And, while I got to say goodbye to Rachel, Dylan had been buried without any friends near him. I had betrayed him, and in the process, I had betrayed something inside myself.

How long did we sit there? How long did I weave my story, tragic and yet true, in that cemetery? How long did I allow the broken bits of me tumble out onto that cold, stone bench and down the green hill to settle like so many scattered birthday cards upon Rachel’s grave? I couldn’t tell you then, and, after all these millions of seconds, I can’t tell you now.

From this distance I would almost believe that he was a ghost. He had no car, no companion, he seemed to have materialized and, in memory, to have simply disappeared. I would think that he was nothing more than an apparition except that we embraced.

It was time to go. Hanging around the dead too long leads me down a dark road and I had to leave before I lost the light. I went to hug him goodbye, and he said the only thing that I know he said:

“When you hug a friend, always hug with your left arm raised, because it brings your hearts as close together as they can be.”

And I left. I drove away with the sense that I had just experienced something that would change me. A Moment that would be an indelible part of who I was and am for the rest of my life. But it was only after I left that I felt that. I wonder if he did, too.

As much as I miss my friends who are dead, their absence is a finality. I can never see them again, talk to them, laugh with them, touch them. They are gone. My longing for them is something different than what I feel for this man who I met for such a brief time on a dreary autumn afternoon years ago. Who was he? Where did he come from? What quality did he possess to allow me to transcend years of careful suppression?

I will probably never know. Without so much as a name or even a solid memory to begin from, there is little hope that I will know anything beyond my vaporous memories and a passing sense of magic.

And for that, I am sorry.