Small Town Grief

I grew up in a upstate New York suburb not too far from New York City which, I suspect, wasn't terribly different than many suburbs in the New York metropolitan area located in Connecticut, New Jersey or Long Island. The proximity to the city made us worldly and cosmopolitan enough to keep us from feeling "small-town", but at the core, the community marked by the Pearl River school district (comprised of Pearl River and parts of Orangeburg, Tappan and Nanuet) had that friendly small-town feel. My graduating class was less than 140 people and every student was at least acquainted with any other student, and by extension, parents knew each other. When tragedy struck, everyone in that town felt. And if you were a student, this tragedy was something that defined part of your time at the school, sort of a "Where were you when Kennedy was shot?" or "Where were you when the space shuttle Challenger blew up?" sort of thing.

I remember three tragedies during my time at Pearl River. When I was in elementary school and my older brother had just started high school, a young lady named Paula Bohovesky was raped and murdered. When I was in middle school, Keith Savarese, the former quarterback of our football team, commit suicide during a visit home from college his freshman year. But what sticks in my mind most vividly is the death of Alicia Brady in a car accident. Because I was a senior at the time and her brother was a classmate, the impact of her loss hit home a little closer. I remember standing in a line for her wake which stretched for a half a mile down Franklin Avenue.

This came to mind recently when our small town was hit twice in recent weeks. I had read about the deadly Hudson River boat crash which killed the bride-to-be and best man-to-be on CNN.com not realizing until a friend told me that the surviving groom was the brother of a girl who used to be in our high school social clique. And a week ago, we lost a classmate, Malini. after a heroic battle with brain cancer (and a little more than two years ago, we lost another classmate, Michael, to stomach cancer). 

I'm sure that this story isn't unique. Every adult has a school that they left behind and classmates with whom bonds still exist through Facebook or a network of friends. And even if I haven't talked to overwhelming majority of these classmates in years, I can't help but grieve when I think of their death and the families they've left behind.

I remember Malini as being the friendly girl who lived in our neighborhood on Fort Lee Place, the same street as young chums Jimmy Acheson, J.P. Yore, Neil Fabella and Alex Meyers. I remember warm conversations in the library and on the bus around track and school. As for Michael Bohn, I remember a happy-go-lucky guy always with a smile on his face. I also fondly remember him mooning the substitute teacher in 7th grade twice... and getting caught in the act the second time around. I'm also heartened, as I read through their respective battles with cancer, is that their faith in God grew and became all the more central to their lives even to the end.

And sadly, these stories won't be the last. My classmates and I are getting older, and the high school illusions of immortality are giving way to family responsibilities, work responsibilities and high cholesterol. I guess the challenge to the rest of us remaining classmates is: What legacy will we leave behind? And for those of us who are graced with at least one more year on this earth than Mike and Malini got, how will we be good stewards of these gifts?