Always Say “Goodbye” With a Smile
We first met on a sunny afternoon in July of 1998. Mom, Dad, my older brother Jim, and I were unpacking the boxes we shipped to ourselves from Taipei. As we stocked the kitchen in our new Bellevue home, three Caucasian boys showed up at our doorstep.
“Come out!” they cheerfully demanded.
We performed the usual ritual of introductions, but it went “in one ear, then out the other” as I hardly spoke any English at the time. Overwhelmed by the inconvenience of their inability to speak Mandarin, it finally hit me — my family has moved to the States after years of planning. Daunting as it may seem, I’m going to have to get serious about mastering the art of past, present, and future tense.
My parents recognized the importance of befriending our new neighbors and encouraged Jim and me to go out. We took a brief stroll around the block while tossing a football around. Through a game of charades and a few broken English sentences, I managed to ascertain vital information about the identity of our new friends: there’s the guy across the street, the guy next door, and the guy two doors down in the other direction.
Most of my memories from middle school revolved around spending time with these three individuals. Although making new friends at school as an ESL student was difficult, I felt like I could always count on the three of them: I saw them every morning at the bus stop, and again at the end of the school day on the bus ride home. As my English gradually improved, I slowly started remembering people’s names in English. My first accomplishment occurred when I realized that “LJ” merely consists of letters from the alphabet. Whew, that was easy, he’s the guy who lived two doors down in the other direction. After a while came “Tristan”, the guy next door. It was more difficult than the alphabets but still manageable. I achieved a real milestone the first time I said “Lyle” out loud. He’s the guy who lived across the street, and there was something about the “-yle” sound that just made no sense to me at all. Despite my endless battling with names, I learned the basics of American football from them along with other useful tidbits about being American. Thus began my slow transformation into a Seattleite.
Everything changed in high school. People started learning how to drive. Couples emerged out of the crowds of strangers in the hallways. All of a sudden, smoking and drinking became the “cool” thing to do. It seemed like everyone and their brother wanted to throw parties in their basement while the parents were out on vacation.
Lyle was who I would call a “cool kid.” He was good-looking, played offense on the varsity soccer team, always had a date to every school dance, and seemed to know everyone. Needless to say, I didn’t even come close to keeping up with him. Tristan was religious and played in the school band. Sundays were off-limits for hanging out, and he seemed to always be busy after school. LJ and I stayed close until he bought a car. He started hosting and attending parties, keeping fifths of liquor hidden in the back of his car. The straw broke when he got a girlfriend — he was never home anymore. I started playing on the tennis team, and made some of my own friends at school. Given my parents’ philosophy on school — “every B you get is an A you’re not getting” — I was keeping myself plenty busy. I still took the bus most of the time, only without the company of those three. Through all of these changes, we drifted apart.
One day during my junior year, I heard from a mutual friend that LJ had been broken up with by his girlfriend Marta. He was very down, and kept asking her to take him back. Unfortunately, he didn’t always get along with some of Marta’s closest friends, and Marta was having trouble balancing her relationship with him against the rest of her friends. When I heard the news at the time, I didn’t make much of it. People get together and break up all the time in high school, it’s no big deal. It seemed like an inevitable reality that LJ would get over Marta, and move on to find another girlfriend in no time.
I will always remember December 9th, 2003. It was my mom’s 51st birthday, and it was also the last time I saw LJ. I saw him in the hallway as I walked out of AP Statistics class. He was glancing down at his feet, and had this dreadful expression on his face. He didn’t seem to notice me as I walked past him, and for some reason I didn’t think to say “hi” to him either. That evening, I was having dinner at home with my mom on a seemingly-typical Tuesday night. Suddenly the phone rang. It was my good friend Abby.
“Have you heard?” mumbled Abby. She was crying.
Abby called to deliver the news. She told me that LJ had died earlier that day. He left school and then called Marta on her cell phone. He asked her to take him back, she said no and hung up. He called her again, except this time he said he was driving very fast, and threatened to end his own life if she didn’t take him back. She said no, and hung up.
This story is important to me for two reasons. The first is that this was when I first learned that everyone is just as confused about the world as I am. I’ve always felt a bit like a “fish out of water” as a Taiwanese immigrant trying to stay out of the way of the popular kids in school. As it turns out, everyone is on a lifelong quest to find themselves, especially in high school.
The second, perhaps more important, reason is that this was my first real exposure to death. The permanence of death is… incredible. It’s permanent! It cannot be rethought or undone. It puts everything into a unique perspective, making the day-to-day things that mattered so much in the moment seem completely negligible. I wish that I had the sense to greet LJ that last time I saw him at school. I wonder if I could have helped him feel better during his lowest moments. I wish I could say that the last thing I said to him was “thank you for being my first friend.”
I would like to conclude this post with a challenge for all of you. Think about someone you haven’t talked to for a while. Think about someone with whom the last interaction you had was less than ideal. Reach out to that person and make sure your last interaction with them is a positive one, because you may never have the chance to see that person again.
A shameless plug to Seattleites — If you enjoy stories like these, I encourage you to visit Fresh Ground Stories. It’s a free, storytelling meet-up that meets at Roy Street Coffee in Capitol Hill once a month. I told this story there a few months ago. Paul, the facilitator, draws names out of a box to determine who tells the next story, alternating between one of their talented regulars and a first-timer. I typically get there 15–20 minutes early, grab a cider, and take a seat before the cafe fills up.
Don’t be a stranger,
— Patrick
