A consequential life cut short

I’m writing this on my birthday. I just turned 60, not exactly ancient but the journey is more than half over. I’ve loved, I’ve had triumphs, I’ve made mistakes, I’ve mourned, I’ve been blessed and, in some ways, cursed. It’s been a good life, and I look forward to filling whatever is left of it with as much happiness and as little sorrow as possible. I’ve been very lucky.

But as I write on this day of personal celebration, a young man is being laid to rest. He was 21, on the cusp of the years that matter, one foot still anchored in the halcyon days of youth and one moving forward into the exciting possibilities of maturity. And a stranger stopped that forward motion, trapping his past in memory’s amber and shredding the pages where the future is written.

Sam Collington was a boy from Delco, a son, a brother, a grandson, a nephew, a cousin, and a friend. He will never be a husband, a father, an uncle or a grandfather. A stranger robbed him of those treasures, on Thanksgiving weekend. This column is not about the heavy sorrow of his loss, or the person who stole this beloved young man from his family and the greater community. This is about Sam, his spirit and his sense of purpose and the need to honor his life -- a very consequential one — by making him more than just the victim of a horrific act of violence.

I did not know Sam personally, but in that strange Delco “Six Degrees of Separation” way, I know someone who knows someone who knew him very well. Here is what that good friend had to say about Sam, who would have graduated in December from Temple University and set the world on fire with his passion for politics and social justice:

“Once, in middle school, Sam and some of us other guys were discussing celebrities that we would marry. Sam stunned us all with his answer: Betty White. I initially questioned his sanity, but he explained that he loved how funny she was, and that she had a great personality. He was only 11, and he managed to look beyond the fact that his dream girl was about 80 years older than he was, at the time.

“Years later, in the summer of 2020, Sam and I went fishing with a group of friends. I was 20, didn’t have any experience in the sport and barely knew what I was doing, but he stayed with me, waiting for the fish to bite and explained, ‘It’s not the catch that matters, it’s the wait.’ That’s an example of how my friend understood that the things that matter don’t come easily, or when we want them to. When they come, if they come, it’s because we’ve spent the time doing what’s necessary to make it happen. Kind of like being the master of your own fate.

“I feel sorry for the world, because it won’t ever know the Sam Collington that we all knew. It won’t have the chance to experience the amazing things I know he would have created with his kind, passionate spirit, pushing him forward.”

According to his obituary, Sam graduated from Interboro High School in 2018. It’s no surprise that he was involved in a lot of activities including band, theater, and the National Honor Society. It’s even less of a surprise that he was voted Most Likely To Succeed. And he did succeed, brilliantly, if all too briefly. He was an Eagle Scout, single-handedly organized a walk out in honor of the Parkland shooting victims, and volunteered on a regular basis in his hometown, Prospect Park. He campaigned for Bernie Sanders, interned for Philadelphia City Commissioner Omar Sabir, and worked to get Alexandra Hunt elected to Congress. At Temple he was the president of the Political Science Society and the Vice President of the Young Democrats.

This was already a consequential life, at its beginnings. And therein lies the greatest cruelty, the fact that the ending came so quickly, with no notice and prematurely. It is always tragic when lives are lost to violence, but there is an added ache when the life that has been lost was already changing other lives.

It is unfair that a 60-yearold woman gets to celebrate her birthday as a boy four decades younger is carried to his final rest. Life is erratic like that, filled with inequity. Let’s hope that in Sam’s honor, there will be a balancing of the universal scales. And until then, let’s remember Sam Collington with joy.