I keep thinking my phone's gonna ring and the person on the other end will be laughing/crying so hard I'll barely be able to understand what they're saying. They'll be laughing out of relief that the whole thing was a joke, but crying because they're feeling such a confusing mixture of anger and relief that they don't know what to do with themselves. It'll be hard to understand what they're saying, but the gist of it will be this: Christofer, the ultimate prankster who loved to laugh more than anyone I've ever known, didn't really die; he just played the Best Prank on all of us.
I keep waiting for that phone call, but it's been a few days and it hasn't come yet.
I was at our winter retreat for Kids With A Promise this weekend when I got a text from one of my managers at Alice's. "If any of you need to talk," it read, "I'm here for you. I love you all."
That's sweet of her was my first reaction.
That's not a normal text was my second reaction.
Something's wrong was my third, and more panicked, reaction.
I texted Gretchen and asked if something was wrong at Alice's. She wrote back, "Yes, but I didn't want to worry you; I know you have a lot on your plate this weekend that you need to focus on."
Too late. I'm already worried. What's going on??? -- I texted back.
"Christofer fell out of a window and passed away at 5:30 this morning. That's all we know right now."
Passed away? Something's wrong here. That's not possible. I just saw him on Tuesday, and we were laughing and joking and he was dancing and making fun of me and entertaining everyone around us. No. Something's wrong. Maybe he fell, but he must have just broken something.
But it was there in the text-- "passed away at 5:30 this morning"-- like they knew for sure. Like it wasn't open for debate anymore. Like there's no chance that maybe he'll be okay and this'll just be one of those really close calls that make us so thankful we still have him.
It wasn't that sort of text at all.
So I'm back in the city now, and we're all trying to make sense of this together. "It's so silly and senseless; it just makes me so angry," one of my friends texted me. "I just want to understand why it happened, and it doesn't make sense," said another.
I want to tell you that I understand why it happened, but I don't know either.
I'm clinging to the fact that God is good, even when things don't make sense to us. And this, for sure, doesn't make sense to me.
It doesn't help that I haven't quite yet grasped that this is real. I'm still waiting for that phone call telling me that Christofer just played the most elaborate prank on us that he could think of.
I'm sorry Anne. I've had a couple of friends who have died tragically. One from suicide the other fell from a window in her 11th floor apartment.
ReplyDeleteThese things happened when I was in college. Even years later, it still doesn't make sense. I guess the thing I had difficulty with was that neither of these deaths had to happen i.e. easily preventable.
It does take time for it to sink in though.
One day at a time.