Will

Today is going to be a sad post. I apologize in advance.

Last week I found out that one of my friends from high school was killed in a car accident. Today’s post is a tribute to him.

I have always prided myself on my writing, but when I have to summarize my relationship with someone—when I have to quantify their character and their quirks and what makes someone real, and put that all down on paper, it becomes unfathomably difficult. That’s how I’m feeling right now. How I feel as I sit here trying to write about Will.

It’s always supposed to be the “other people”; the friends of friends, distant relatives or people we knew but didn’t have a relationship with. Those are the people who get cancer and die in car accidents. Not someone in your class. Not a friend. Not Will.

Will was not one of the ones that I would have predicted that I keep up with after academy ended. He was the new kid our Sophomore year. He came into our tight-knit class with an amount of individuality that was surprising for someone so young. He was completely and 100% himself and stuck to that every minute of the day. I never saw him back down from anything or change himself under peer pressure. He was always faithful to who he was.

He was predictable, he wanted to follow after his parents and join the military. He joined the Air Force right after graduation, went to training, then got stationed in Minot, ND. That had always been his plan.

When you’re 16, most boys are terribly frustrating, and Will was no exception. I always threatened to fight him when he annoyed me, and he would just ask “what time”. I think he thought I was joking, and I think I thought I was serious . . . It all worked out in theend and we never actually fought. We never even talked that much when we were at school together, but he made a point to contact me regularly after graduation, and after being sent to ND. I was just a few hours south, at school in Nebraska, so we always talked about a weekend trip to see each other. But it never happened.

He would text me “hey” and we would text back and forth 15 or 20 times until one of us got busy and forgot to text back. Nothing special, noting profound, nothing life changing. Just friendship. We talked about work, and classes, and what the temperature was in both of our equally frigid states. We discussed my nearly non-existent life plan, and later once I had things figured out, his. He texted me on holidays to wish me “Merry Christmas”, or “Happy Thanksgiving” and he always wished me “fair night” when we said goodbye. He sent me a draft of his book prologue and told me he based a character he was working on, off of me. And that’s how I fell into friendship with Will. It wasn’t crazy or theatrical. It was earthy. It was making time to ask about each other; to check in on how the other was doing. It was uncomplicated and comfortable. It was real, and beautiful and something I will miss for the rest of my life.