Today marks the fourth anniversary of the passing of one of my best friends from grade school. Tim and I hadn't spoken in years; in fact I think the last time I had actually seen him was my first year of college. On top of all that, we had only been classmates for two years in 7th and 8th grade, but during that brief period of time we had built a great friendship.
Before I get too in depth, I should confess something: I didn't remember today was the anniversary of his passing until I happened to see one of my friends mention it on Facebook. I didn't even know she and Tim had known each other at all, but when I saw her post I immediately thought back to the day when I had found out about him being gone. I felt like I was a bit of a bad friend for not remembering today was the date I found out he was gone, but I was relieved that some of my friends have better memories than I do.
Four years ago, I got an email from my sister one day who was messaged on Facebook from another of my childhood buddies who was part of my circle of friends with Tim (I wasn't on Facebook at the time). There were four of us all together: Rob, Dan, Tim, and me. One of our mothers - I'm not sure which - had dubbed us The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse since we were all so close and had a knack for causing as much mayhem as your average adolescent kid could. Still, we were a good bunch of kids, and we had a blast during our brief time as classmates.
Getting back to the email from my sister, she forwarded a copy of a message from my buddy Rob. He said he was trying to get in contact with me and found Marie on Facebook. He wrote her hoping she was my younger sister (obviously, he was right) and asked if she could put the two of us in touch. I wrote him as soon as I got the message to see how he was doing, and that was when he broke the news to me: Our fellow Horseman Tim was gone. He didn't have any details as to the circumstances, but he wanted to make sure I knew. It was a very bittersweet reunion of sorts, since I was both thrilled to hear from Rob, but also shocked to hear about Tim.
I did more digging on Tim over the next few days, and I eventually found a website where friends and family posted messages to his family after his funeral. From what I could gather, he was married and his wife was pregnant at the time of his passing. A bunch of familiar names showed up on the message board, and I had hoped in this time of great sorrow and mourning, his family was able to find a little solace in knowing how many lives were affected by Tim's passing.
I know this is one of the more saddening posts I've written in a long time, so I'll close with a good memory of Tim. I'm not sure if anyone reading this will really appreciate it, but here goes. When we were in 8th grade, all Four Horsemen had to work together on a science project on weather. We decided on doing a video project called The All-Disaster Channel and videotaped it at one of our houses in the basement. We took G.I. Joe action figures to represent "on-site" reporters who had experienced disasters such as mudslides, city fires, tornadoes, earthquakes, and hail storms. I was chosen to be the Peter Jennings of the bunch and ran everything from my "studio," but I couldn't keep a straight face to save my life. We even included blooper clips of me bursting out into laughter from reading the script we had put together.
Our video culminated with a massive hail storm where an unfortunate G.I. Joe stood in as a reporter on the front lines as we pelted it with crumpled pieces of paper to represent hail stones. We had the guy sitting in a Jeep, and one of us played his voice, narrating everything he had experienced in the storm. He yelled out, "Oh no, here comes a BIG ONE!" and we dropped a bowling ball on the Jeep, shattering it into pieces. I think somehow we still ended up with an A on the project, even though it was one of the most absurd videos ever put together.
Tim, wherever you are now, I hope you are at peace. We may not have spoken in years, but I pray your family is well and that God is watching down on them for you.
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