Watching the recent Bam Margera interview has brought back some pretty tough emotions. In the interview, Bam makes the statement that he has lost his best friend, Ryan Dunn, and doesn’t foresee recovering from such a tragic experience.
Bam – I’ve never met you – but you have brought me to tears. You have unfortunately inspired me to write about my experiences with the same untimely loss of friends. This is something that, in 12 years, I have never shared with anyone. I recognize that it is a therapeutic necessity to share our stories in order to find peace, commonality, and progression in death, so here is mine...
I come from a small farming community on the south side of Fort Wayne. The roads are endless and mostly stone. Trees create tunnel-like barriers on either side of the road. The occasional bend is lined with a guardrail but is mostly exposed to oncoming travelers.
The people are restless. Long days of work for adults are rewarded with cold beers from a big blue cooler on wheels and/or shots at the local dive. The youth throw barnyard keg parties that consist of laughter, smoke shows, fistfights, country music, and a little homegrown. The distance between farmhouses is so great that these spectacles typically go unnoticed.
The attendees are faced with two options when choosing to end the nights events: they can sleep it off in their car or tent, or, they can make the long trek across Allen County - drunk, in the dark, and on feeble stone roads. The latter is the option most frequently selected by the masses (this sadly includes myself).
This is the equation that has brought so many untimely deaths. Young travelers aren’t typically driving erratic for shear pleasure. They are simply trying to make the journey home so that they can wake up for church or a graduation party the next day and attend with their families and loved ones. But somewhere along their path, they slip up. The booze settles in and reactions take the back seat. They loose control…
I remember the first one. Yes, there have been many. In 12 years, almost 10. It’s truly sad when you have to sit back and count- when you have to force yourself to remember. The first one happened when I was 16. My dad picked me up from a friend’s house early on a Saturday morning. I was hung over and was not looking forward to a 20-minute ride home with my ol’ man investigating me about my smell. As much as I didn’t want to see him at that hour, I know now that he felt the same. The last thing he wanted to do was tell his son that one of his best friends had died the night before in an alcohol related car crash. But being the good father that he is, he knew it was his role. I climbed into the truck cab and saw his face. I could tell he had cried that morning, but not one of those cries that turns your face red or puffs your eyes. It was a cry he held back for me. A few tears had slipped through, but he knew he had to be strong for me. He knew that what he was about to tell his youngest son the worst news he could ever deliver.
“Hey son… how are you?”
“Fine. What’s up?”
At this point, I knew in my heart that something wasn’t right. I had never seen my dad’s face look like this.
“Pete, I’ve got tell you something… Dane was in a car accident last night on Monroeville Rd. He didn’t make it.”
“What?! That can’t be right. Are you sure it was him?”
“Yeah, Pete, I’m sure…”
I don’t really remember much else after that. I’m pretty sure I cried and my Dad stayed quiet. He knew that this was just the beginning of a terrible and tragic recovery that myself and so many of my friends would be forced to take on.
But do you ever recover? This question is the entire point of my writing…and to clarify, I mean both this piece and writing in general.
The answer is no. It is unfortunate, but no. You never recover – and when you have reoccurring instances of the same event year after year, it get’s even harder. Eventually you begin to ask questions - not just questions about the wreck or the death. You begin to question everything that you have ever known to be true. It’s easy to find an outlet to release all of the rage and sadness that boils inside. Getting into fights or drinking into oblivion – these seem to temporarily fill the void and stop the questioning. And then you wake up with a black eye and a headache, and it starts again.
Eventually, you fall back into what one can only consider normalcy. At least, you get back into a routine of some sort. One day, years later, you’re walking by yourself through a crowded campus while away at college and you just start laughing. You’re not sure where it came from, but something that friend used to say all of the time enters your brain. It’s hilarious. It was always hilarious. You laughed then and you’re laughing now. While cracking up out loud and surrounded by strangers, you realize that in that moment, you have found something. It is a gift that was given to you by your friend long ago while they were very much alive and breathing. You didn’t realize it then, but the moment they spoke, the moment they made you laugh uncontrollably, was the moment they showed you exactly what life is all about. They captured that interaction and engrained it into your thought process for the rest of your living days. You will always have those memories; some you have always remembered and some you have forgotten but will appropriately pop up when you need them the most – just like your friend always did.
In death, we celebrate. We celebrate the opportunity we have been given to feel love and to experience happiness. Even in the short life of those who were taken from me, they experienced these things. One moment of true happiness – true pleasure – true togetherness – is worth all of the morning and sadness that we experience when losing a friend.
To my friends, family, Bam, and to all of you who have similar stories: You must force yourself to look for something positive in death. It will be the hardest thing you will ever ask yourself to do, but do it. Until you do, the untimely death will continue to be a wasted life.
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