A Story
I couldn't take about this when it happened, for obvious reasons. I think enough time (eight years) has passed now, though.
When we were in Austin, there was a boy playing hockey who was a year older than Eli. A great kid, genuinely. Excellent hockey player, straight 'A' student, and very congenial and polite.
His parents were, too. They were both first-generation immigrants, both professionals. Always upbeat and ready with a smile. Whenever I saw one of them (practice times often overlapped), I'd stop and chat. I always left feeling glad I'd stopped.
One afternoon, I received a call from the person in the hockey program who had basically adopted Eli (he's been adopted many times). She's one of the best people I ever met, and she's Canadian (bonus). She said something bad had happened and that I needed to check the local news.
I did. There was a story about a shooting in a suburb of Austin involving a husband and a wife.
It was the boy's parents.
The story said the wife had been shot and the husband had turned the gun on himself. What the story didn't say is that the great kid, the congenial and polite kid, had been home at the time, along with two siblings. When he heard the first shot, he ran to the bedroom and pounded on the door, trying to stop whatever was happening.
Then there was a second shot.
I felt numb. There was nothing in me that knew how to respond.
The great kid was just finishing junior high or starting high school, if I remember correctly, and now he was both an orphan and had two siblings younger than him to look out for. It would be a crushing, impossible load for anyone.
He hung on, for a while. Then he quit playing hockey, which was a second family. Stopped going to school. Started getting into trouble. He must have thought nothing mattered, and who could blame him?
It was the kind of story that doesn't even have a suitable word attached to it, because 'tragedy' is so inadequate.
I thought about him yesterday, for reasons unknown, and I decided to try and find him online. I expected not to find him, or to find only sadness, but I wanted to find out.
I stumbled onto his Instagram.
A picture of him with a long-time girlfriend. Pictures of him playing hockey. Skateboarding. Looking comfortable in his own skin.
Somehow, he made it through to the other side. I don't know many who would.
I don't know if I've ever felt so much respect and happiness for another human being in my entire life.
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