When some lives end, the memories don’t
It’s one thing to mourn the passing of a life that experienced the fullness of years, and quite another to forever wonder what might have been possible in a life cut short.
In writing a column like this over a span of many years you often find yourself remembering folks you never heard of until their paths crossed yours at the most devastating moments in the lives of those who loved them.
Somehow you hoped those loved ones knew they were more than just another day at the office to you, that the ones they loved and lost had somehow claimed a piece of you, too.
You don’t need a Memorial Day weekend to remember them again because not all memories are confined to a calendar; some, like those that follow, remain forever nearby.
Phoebe Prince, a 15yearold high school freshman who was bullied to death in South Hadley, has never been forgotten here. Neither has Ryan Morrissey, a 17yearold kid killed by a street punk’s stray bullet in Charlestown, or Dawnn Jaffier, a terrific 26yearold tutor to elementary school children in Jamaica Plain who was similarly killed by a stray bullet fired by a thug while attending J’ouvert, the Caribbean Carnival parade along Blue Hill Avenue.
Their deaths could never be called “accidents,” nor could the deaths of Joey LoRusso, a 15yearold Saugus kid killed by a drunken driver on Christmas Eve, or Katie Brannelly, 23, a beautiful kid majoring in child psychology who stepped off a curb in Norwood and was fatally struck by a driver preoccupied with texting.
Then there are times when death seems mingled with chance, as it did when Scituate’s Coby Cutler, 18, who longed to be a Marine, died when a bolt of lightning struck his weapon on the rifle range at Parris Island, or when Scott Procopio, 20, a Marine corporal from Saugus, was killed while on patrol in Iraq.
Scott’s dad, Kevin, asked the notification team how it happened.
“They told me an alQaeda guy sat by the side of the road with a remote control button. When the first Humvee passed, he didn’t press it. When the second passed, he didn’t press it. But when the third passed over the bomb, he pushed the button and my son died.”
It’s so random, so needless, so painful, so final.
It’s one thing to mourn the passing of a life that experienced the fullness of years, and quite another to forever wonder what might have been possible in a life cut short.
So while we set aside this weekend every year to reflect upon those no longer with us, there are those for whom the grieving never really ends, nor do the memories, even those of a columnist, ever fade away.