The Only Life I Could Save

by Katherine Ketcham

  Anger

  Bloodshot eyes

  Change in physical hygiene

  Defensive

  Emotional highs and lows

  Fear

  Getting secretive

  Hardheaded

  Inadequacy

  Joylessness

  Keeping to himself

  Legal problems

  Money problems

  Nervousness

  Oblivious

  Possessions sold or missing

  Quirky behavior

  Resentments

  Smell

  Temper tantrums

  Underachiever

  Violent episodes

  Weight changes

  Xenophobia

  Yammering

  Zany

  Okay, so everything I checked off has been part of his personality since he was a toddler. I remember those awful tantrums when he was two and three years old, when he would scratch and bite and bang his head against me. I’d hold him tight, like a straightjacket, until he calmed down. He’s a passionate boy, prone to anger and emotional ups and downs, occasionally anxious and nervous. But none of the other “symptoms” fit him—oh, except the one and only legal problem. Which was an anomaly, his bad luck to get caught and our good luck to address the problem before it got out of hand.

  I shut the book and put it back on the shelf, feeling a little better about things. Ben is just going through normal adolescence, the typical ups and downs all teenagers experience and all parents can expect. Drugs are everywhere. Of course he was going to be exposed to them, and because he wants to fit in, be part of the crowd, even “be cool,” as he phrased it, it’s no big surprise that he tried them. As I walk away, I think to myself how lucky we are to have three healthy, happy children. I even feel a little smug about it.

  At the end of eighth grade, Ben and his classmates write letters to themselves. The teacher keeps them, little time capsules full of information about life as it is now and life as they imagine it will be four years in the future when they graduate from high school. She mails the letters to her students in their self-addressed, stamped envelopes, and they arrive a few days after high school graduation. Ben’s letter (I smile at the misspellings) is dated June 11, 2001; the postmark is June 6, 2005.

  Well, this is for myself in the feauture. Everything is good right now. I have a girl in mind right now and I’m not sure whats going to happen with that. Her name is Nichole. I’m really into tennis and I’m thinking about getting into a couple of tournaments. I also made a new friend named Colby and he’s going to be a great influence on me to help keep me off drugs and stuff. I used to like doing drugs at school, but now I love swimming, riding bikes, and playing with fireworks and tennis. I like Slipknot, too, Nirvana, Pat Benatar and a lot of Pop and rap. My sister Robyn is in college, Alison is going to be a senior, I’m going to be a freshman, my dad is working at Whitman, and my mom is still writing. By the way, Robyn is going to be a sophmore in college. The world is pretty peaceful. We had that dispute with China about them not giving our pilots back, but other than that it’s ok. A dream I have is that I will eventually go out with Nichole because I liked her from the moment I met her. In highschool I will acheive all my goals which will come to me, after highschool I’ll go to the University of Washington. For a job I will work at Bon Appetite catering service or yard work for Dave Beebe. I will do language, photography, tennis, etc. My friends will be who they are now plus more. I would probably ask Nichole for a dance to. The world will still be peaceful. I really hope I can go out with Nichole because I’d be nice and respect her.

  Ben Spencer

  When the letter from the past arrives four years later in 2005, just a few days before his high school graduation, Ben reads it, chuckles a few times, and tosses it aside. Maybe he mumbles something about Nichole or not being able to spell very well. Really, I don’t remember.

  Here’s what I do remember: Picking up the letter after he leaves the house, smoothing my hand over the page, almost as if I can feel his fifteen-year-old hand holding a newly sharpened pencil, almost as if I can see him, concentrating hard, writing a script for his life four years in the future. I want to hold that hand again, to feel the child-like smoothness of it, to remember how happy it made me to hold his small hand in my own.

  A teacher once told me that during the days when it was her duty to stand outside the entrance to Garrison Middle School, welcoming kids to school for the day, she liked to watch Ben kiss me goodbye. “He wasn’t embarrassed at all,” she said. “He would just lean across the seat and give you a hug and a kiss.” She hoped that her son, now a toddler, would do the same thing when he was in middle school.

  I run my hand one more time across the page Ben wrote, as if I can feel the pressure of his pencil on the paper. Then I staple the envelope to the letter and put it in a folder titled “Ben 2001” so I will remember the way he used to be.

  5

  who made you god?

  2001–2003

  John and I are talking about going out for wrestling.”

  Wrestling? I am flooded with memories of my high school friends and boyfriends trying to “make weight,” wearing those tight one-piece suits, hip bones jutting out, and the funny-looking helmets, soft and form-fitting, specially designed to prevent “cauliflower ear.” Cauliflower ear! Gross.

  I remember watching Joey Wiendl and Jeff Thiel, both state champions, picking up their opponents and throwing them to the mat with a bone-crushing boom, then jumping on top of them as they thrashed around on the sweaty mat, neck tendons stretched, shoulders straining as they struggled to escape the pin. I would look up at the stands, searching for the mothers, wondering how they were dealing with the gruesome twists and torques. They wore varying expressions of fear, excitement, anguish, triumph. What a stupid sport, I thought. I even talked with my wrestling friends, asking them if it was a good idea to lose (or gain) so much weight, wondering what it was about wrestling that they found so exciting, wishing they wouldn’t subject themselves to the torment.

  “Wrestling,” I say to Ben. “That sounds great.” Pat and I are careful not to repeat the mistake we made a few months earlier when Ben asked if he could try out for the swimming team. We (especially me) hemmed and hawed—we had both been swimmers, both national champions in fact (for a few minutes, until the records were broken yet again), and we’d had enough of chlorine, early-morning practices, stopwatches, and heart-pounding moments on the starting block before the official fired the gun. Ben eventually gave up the idea. I felt a little guilty about my lack of support (and, of course, given my perennial “what-if-ing,” have wondered since if swimming might have led him down a different path in life), but in truth I was relieved.

  “When does wrestling start?” I ask.

  “After John is finished with football,” Ben says, a big smile spreading over his face. “John told me today he wants to hang out with me a lot more after football is over.”

  I smile. “You like John a lot, don’t you?”

  “I love John,” he says, adding with pride, “he’s my best friend.”

  “Nothing better than a best friend,” I say softly, running my hand through Ben’s red hair and kissing his forehead. I adore this boy who is so close to his emotions and so willing to express them. I’m also relieved that he’s found a devoted friend. John accepts Ben for who he is—a goofy, somewhat awkward, overly sensitive teenager who has difficulty controlling his exuberant and, at times, explosive emotions.

  Yin and yang, sort of like me and Pat. I think about the book I coauthored on the five elements of traditional Chinese medicine. Ben and I are most like the passionate energy of the fire element, with some of the ambitious, competitive nature of wood thrown in (wood feeds fire, which, in our lives at least, often leads to passionate outbursts). John and Pat, it seems to me, are mostly water—reflective, resourceful, steadfast, fearless, and eminently capable of adapting to changing circumstances. Fire types can definitely use the cool
ing, dependable water energy to balance them, while water types are attracted to fire’s blazing emotional energy.

  Whatever the attraction, Ben idolizes John, who he views as his trust-worthy guide and loyal protector. Nobody will pick on Ben for his red hair and freckles with John by his side. Watching the two of them together, I get the sense that Ben is finding his “fit” in life, discovering a safe place where he is comfortable being himself and accepted by a friend who likes him just the way he is.

  No more vampire dreams for Ben.

  Was it days later? Weeks? The memories are all jumbled up.

  Alison comes home from school, her face red and blotchy from crying.

  “Something bad happened to John,” she says, her words choked with tears. “In yesterday’s football game. He’s really hurt.”

  “Hurt? How? What happened?” I’m thinking maybe John broke his leg or his collarbone. Maybe it’s a concussion. Something fixable. With a strong, healthy fourteen-year-old, what isn’t fixable?

  “I heard he’s in intensive care and unstable. I guess he walked off the field feeling dizzy and then just collapsed. Someone said that he was having a seizure, but I don’t know if that’s true.” She starts to cry again. “People are saying he might be brain damaged.”

  I’m holding my breath, and I remind myself to breathe in, breathe out, stay calm. This report is most likely just high school drama, rumors gone wild. But when I think about Ben, my eyes fill with tears.

  “What about Ben? Does he know?”

  “Yeah, it’s so sad. He broke down at school; he was just sobbing. He left with Mario and Ross and those guys.” I reach out and pull her into my arms. “I’m just so afraid for Ben. He loves John so much.”

  Ben comes home a few hours later. “John isn’t doing too good,” he says, collapsing on the sofa with his head in his hands and breaking down in convulsive sobs.

  I put my arms around him and hold him tight. I can feel his heart beating against my chest. Ali sits next to him and puts her arms around both of us. I wish Pat and Robyn were here with us. I wish I could turn back the clock to yesterday, to before the game, switch things around, keep John on the bench for one or two plays. I wish he had had the flu and missed the game altogether.

  Between sobs, Ben tells us that John is in the intensive care unit. He says the kids at school are walking around saying that John is going to die. Some are saying they hope he does die; if he lives, they worry his brain is so damaged that he will never be John again. A bunch of John’s friends are angry, talking about how stupid football is, how John never liked the sport. Teachers are acting weird, keeping their voices low, trying to calm students who are crying in the classrooms and hallways. The principal announces that grief counselors will be available for students who might need them.

  “I don’t know what to believe,” Ben says. “Johnny can’t die. If Johnny dies, a part of me will die, too.”

  Only family members are allowed to visit John in the hospital. “Why can’t I see him?” Ben keeps asking, a frantic tone in his voice. “I need to see him, to tell him I love him and everything will be okay.”

  Over the weekend, the news gets worse, but we don’t know how to separate rumor from fact. We hear that John was tackled hard and hit his head on the ground. We hear he was running full steam—just like John would—and rammed his head into an opponent’s leg. We hear he was sandwiched between two players, collapsed on the field, walked off on his own, and then had a seizure. Someone said he went back into the game even after he was badly hurt, but we wondered if that was just a John legend—after all, he was not the kind of athlete to sit on the sidelines with a game going on.

  Wednesday morning, October 31, Ben is in his first-period math class. Alison is in a pottery class across the hall. Her teacher leaves the room for a few minutes and returns, red-eyed, to tell Ali’s class she has an announcement. Ali doesn’t wait to hear what the teacher has to say. She runs out to the hallway and stands at the door of Ben’s classroom, trying to get his attention. Finally, he looks up and sees her, leaves the room, and, as she remembers it, “just sort of fell into me.” They are both crying. Everyone is crying. Ben’s math teacher, who is also a football coach, comes out to the hallway and hugs Ben, holding him tight. Ali and Ben walk to the counselor’s office and ask if they can go home. Ali has her arm around Ben’s shoulder, and he is leaning into her.

  “John was his best friend,” Ali says, and the counselor, whose eyes are red from crying, says yes, of course, they can go home.

  “I can’t believe he’s gone,” Ben keeps saying, over and over again. We’re sitting on the living room sofa again, the three of us. His eyes have that distant look of grief, as if all his senses are engulfed in a fog of dense, impenetrable sorrow. He looks dazed, staring off into space, wide-eyed but unseeing. His shoulders slump forward, and he is so still and silent that I wonder if he is breathing.

  There is a right-here-ness about this kind of grief. It is all-encompassing, wrapping us in a shroud so that we feel encased and enclosed, separated and disconnected not only from each other but also from the world we inhabit. I remember after my father died, my sisters suggested we take our children to Toys“R” Us on New Jersey’s Route 22. I sat in the back seat of the car, listening to the cars passing us on the highway, feeling shrunken and terrified. In the store, I was blinded by the bright lights and vivid colors and sat down in the middle of the floor, my hands covering my eyes. In tears, I begged my sisters to leave, ignoring the cries of our children as we dragged them back to the car. My heart longed for silence and solitude. For darkness. For peace.

  The essence of sorrow, of suffering, is that it must be endured. There is no escape. I look at Ben, and I see in him the embodiment of the term “torn-to-pieces-hood,” William James’s brilliant translation of the German word zerrissenheit. He is broken within and without. In a very real sense, he’s lost his home, the safe place John created where Ben felt at peace with himself, with his friends and his family, with his world.

  “I don’t know what to do,” Ben cries. “I need to do something, but I don’t know what to do.”

  Stories. Maybe it would help Ben to write about John, telling some stories about their friendship. When I suggest this, he looks at me for a moment, as if he can’t quite make sense of my words, and then he slowly nods his head. Ali and I sit on the sofa with Nessie, our golden retriever, and Sophie, our springer spaniel, holding them tight. They look at us with big, sad eyes, as if they know something terrible has happened and understand the grief we feel for John, his family, and Ben. We keep looking up at the second floor where Ben is typing on my computer. An hour later, he walks down the stairs and hands me what he has written.

  John meant the world to me. We had the funniest times and had so many good experiences together. One thing I was really proud of John about were his muscles. I remember one time at Oasis Water Works, he was looking so buff, and I was so proud of him and I wanted him to show my sister his muscles, but he was too humble to do that. He was so humble about his muscles and he would hardly ever show them to me even if I asked.

  It’s really strange, it’s like I can’t even breathe because he’s gone. I feel so much for Laure and Jerry and Amy and Whitney and Jamie because they loved him so much. I remember the day before he was injured how I went over to his house to study and he and Marquel and Spencer and Mario and Josh were talking and laughing together. I just sat by myself with Ross. After that I walked over to them and John came over by me and he said, “You wanna go inside?” I felt like that was cool cause he left his other friends and just came over with me.

  John really never was very emotional or sentimental. I remember once that Spencer hit me in the head with a cowbell and I started crying and went outside and Clinton came out with me and was comforting me and John came out, looked at me and decided to go back inside. Later, I was outside with Spencer, and John came out and he was wondering what we were doing and then Spencer said talking about sentime
ntal stuff and John said sentimental stuff sucks and went back inside. People always called me a follower of John cause wherever he went, I was close to follow. I really don’t care because I loved him and I always will and I will forever be the Sam Gamgee of John Quaresma.

  I remember one time we went snowboarding together and went down a run that looked fun that was through the trees. We got in and started wrestling, John kicked my ass really bad and at first he just creamed me and gave me white washes. Then when he thought it was all over I dove at him from about ten feet up the hill and hit him good but then he gave me another whitewash. We got down to the bottom and got stuck in some small brambles. I kept trying to escape and right when I was about to, John jumped from afar and smashed me but then helped me out of the bushes. If I would have escaped no way would I have helped John. Right before this incident happened, I was talking to John about wrestling. We were planning to start hanging out a lot more and working out on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays.

  I believe in a God somewhere but any god that would steal my John from this earth so very early in life is no god that I would like to know. I know that there is a better place than this world, that doesn’t have worthless sports like football, and I know my beloved Johnny is there waiting for the day when I will return to him and we can share another life time of memories. I wanted to say one more thing, John and me always had this thing since Mr. Reid was our sixth grade teacher. Mr. Reid would say “Benny and the . . .” and I would say “Jetts.” Me and John have done that ever since. But I just wanted to write this letter in Johns memory and I know he would be scolding me for being sentimental, but I just wanted to say this like I always will until I see you again, I love you Johnny, and I will always remember you, no matter what.