For a long time after John died, I couldn’t figure how to fill the emotional void he’d left in my life. My kids made me happy, and I had good friends who stayed close. But nothing was as much fun. I didn’t go out much. I’ve always been big on counting my blessings, and I do, but I was deeply angry. And there wasn’t a single thing I could do about it, of course. People are not replaceable. Besides, it’s not as though you can grow up with someone when you’re already grown. Knocked off my horse, I sat on the ground for a while. Two years later I turned forty. The one-two punch sent me reeling. Not a religious person, I decided I needed some kind of spiritual center. The heaven on earth thing needed some work. I started working on a book, not finished yet, about God and man and all the things John and I had debated for years. It was a good thing to do, one that led me here, to this book about my friend.
I wrote a book and I bought a kayak and I work out daily. You put pieces of your friends inside you. As I realized even that morning of John’s crash, love and loss go together. I still think it’s important to understand what might have been. In Johnny, We Hardly Knew Ye, President Kennedy is quoted about the death of his older brother, Joe: “It is the realization that the future held the promise of great accomplishments for Joe that made his death so particularly hard for those who knew him. His worldly success was so assured and inevitable that his death seems to have cut into the natural order of things.”
And yet, in John’s case, though he left us early, he lived a remarkably full life. In my case, I’ve got a lifetime of stories. And for that I am deeply grateful.
THE MEN WE BECAME. Copyright © 2004 by Robert T. Littell. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.
www.stmartins.com
ISBN 0-312-32476-6
EAN 978-0312-32476-6
First Edition: June 2004
eISBN 9781466851856
First eBook edition: July 2013
The Men We Became Page 20