I'm sitting in my recliner tonight, wishing I wasn't here.
I wish I was packing my bags. Packing my bags for a flight I wish I could catch tomorrow. Not that I really want to do that either - catch a flight to go to the memorial service of a friend I didn't spend enough time with, didn't learn enough from, didn't invest enough in.
The documentary he was in - the one I discovered a year ago on Netflix and was pleasantly surprised when I heard his voice come through the TV's speakers - is playing in the background. The tab for airline tickets too expensive to fit my budget is open just behind this post. I keep checking again, hoping for a miracle - a cheap ticket in a time table that works for me to fly across the country to revisit what feels like a past lifetime.
***
Jay Austin and I went to graduate school together at Georgetown along with 14 other incredible people. People all so very different from me. Looking back, I needed that experience so badly. I needed to see and watch and learn from and be challenged by intelligent, capable, wonderful people incredibly different from me.
Just about everything about Jay and me was different. Different religion, different age, different family situation, different gender, different political affiliations, different socioeconomic status when we grew up, different diet, different marital status, different everything. And yet.
Jay was the kind of guy who didn't let differences get in the way of relationship. He was naturally warm and friendly, charming and funny, clever and intelligent. He was fun to have at a party, ready to rise to the challenge of a good debate....
...And there he is. Alive and wonderful in the documentary on my TV screen. But not in this world anymore...
Jay Austin isn't with us anymore. That's hard to type.
It may seem strange that I'm hit so hard by the death of a classmate I haven't seen since he visited 5 years ago, haven't seen regularly in 8 years. But I have seen him. We've had conversations recently, regularly. Kind of.
Last summer Jay sold most of his stuff, moved his tiny house into storage (he was a "minimalist" who lived in a 145 sq/ft house), and flew to South Africa with his girlfriend Lauren, and they took off on an adventure to bike around the world. Some headlines say they used their "life savings" to bike around the world. True as that may be, it wasn't like they were on a big budget. At $4,000/year for the both of them together including food, lodging, medical expenses, and necessities, they were on a shoestring budget. But that's beside the point. They wanted to experience all that life and the world had to offer from the vantage point of 2 wheels.
Jay and Lauren, but mostly Jay, blogged about their adventures over the last year. That's how we had our conversations. Late at night, after middle-of-the-night feeding the baby, I would crawl back into bed and not be able to sleep. So I'd pull down my phone and check simplycycling.org.
Thirty-nine times over the last year, Jay told me (and many others) about the time he got chased by a bull elephant, about not being able to find a place to camp, about how cold it feels when your water proof gloves aren't water proof and it's freezing rain, about how kind and generous and incredibly human people are the world over.
Until just after he posted blog post #39.
Jay and Lauren, along with 2 other cyclists, were killed in Tajikistan on July 29 in what ISIS has claimed as an act of terrorism. It's just unbelievable.
On July 30 I received an email with the crushing news from a fellow classmate, and then the news stories started hitting...
CNN
BBC
ABC
The New York Times
CBS
I was contacted by a reporter from the Washington Post. Incredibly distant from the whole situation, I directed him to continue his search for sources in the District, where Jay lived most recently.
I still check Jay's blog, still hoping against hope, but knowing that blog post #40 won't come. I still check his Instagram feed randomly, wondering if maybe one more post was saved in his phone, waiting to be posted until he had better service. I check my email to see if maybe, just maybe he DID respond to the email I sent on July 20, but it got hung up somewhere in the digital stratosphere and will arrive even now.
***
I sit here, today, on the first anniversary of my cousin's death, wishing I could attend Jay's memorial in person, hating death.
How many must death take? How cruel the theft of years and dreams and time and relationships.
Every time I encounter death, I buck against its unnatural nature. We were not made to die. We were made, created, designed, born to live.
No matter how many moments we have, no matter how many experiences we enjoy, no matter how many relationships we have, they're never quite enough. Death always snatches us just a bit too soon.
We're approaching 19 years since my brother's death. What I wouldn't give for just one more hug, one more smile, one more laugh, one more hour, even just a few minutes to introduce him to my kids, to tell him how much he has impacted my life both through his life and through his death. He mattered.
I think maybe that's something Jay always saw - that people matter. He wasn't a Christian. At least, he wasn't when we were in grad school, and he never told me if he did "find God." But something he did better than me and my "Christian" self was he helped people feel that they matter.
I tend to get all inside my head, categorizing people. Deciding how I want to interact with them, how they fit into my world, what influence I might be able to have with them. And it feels to people like they don't really matter to me. At least, that's something I've learned over time, and have tried to change. Because people don't want that - to be a project, a number, a category. People want to know that they matter. Because they do.
At least, if I'm being honest, that's what I want.
Jay and I had a few email exchanges and comments back and forth over the years about each other's blog posts. And now that I re-read them, they show why I miss him so already, what was similar about us, though in almost every other way we were different.
Jay wrote this comment in response to one of my posts, Am I Enough?
Thanks for sharing this. As someone who has also chosen to prioritize non-career-oriented passions over career-oriented goals, I know it can be really difficult to see those around you continuing in one direction as you head on your own (often under-respected) journey. That said, it takes tremendous strength to do so. I've found, back here in DC, that those same people getting fancy titles and big promotions are grappling with those same insecurities of never being enough, of finding themselves newly surrounded by folks with even fancier titles and even bigger promotions to covet, to envy, and to stir discontent within.
We had a mutual respect for each other's pursuits for things so different from what we ourselves wanted. I will never take off on a bike journey around the world. He would never have bought a 2,500 square foot home on almost an acre of land and planned to stay there forever.For what it's worth, I'm super-proud of you for going your own way, and for creating something(s) that you love and care about and that will continue to bring light into the world after you're gone, and for doing it all DESPITE the temptation of a shiny new thing you're more than capable of attaining if you so chose. That's more than "just enough"—it's something really, really wonderful.
But I could see the world through his eyes as I followed his blog. I experienced Africa, Europe, Asia in a way I never would have, but for his writing. And I fancy that he got a taste of family life deeply rooted in a small town in the Midwest by following mine. He mattered to me, and he made me feel like I mattered to him.
***
Jay was an innovator with some crazy ideas. As aforementioned, he lived in a tiny house, on a rogue property in the District of Columbia.
I remember this conversation he had when he visited us. He was vegan (meaning he ate no meat, nor animal by products like eggs, milk, etc.), and I'd gone shopping for tofu and vegan-friendly marinade in an attempt to make something tasty for him. (Here he was, right in the heart of corn-fed beef territory, but no meat for him!) We were discussing his convictions about food, and I asked if there would ever be a situation in which he would be morally ok eating something non-vegan. To which he replied that he supposed he would eat an egg if he happened to be walking through a field and saw a chicken (or bird) lay an unfertilized egg in the field and then walk away from it, there being no chance for life in said egg, and it being abandoned by the bird. I laughed and took another bite of my burger.
Jay didn't believe in keeping animals penned in or in cruelty in any way to any animal. So I naturally asked him what he thought of us keeping our indoor cocker spaniel (Frazier). His response was that while he, personally, wouldn't keep a dog, it seemed to him that Frazier was happy with us, and we took good care of the dog, so he didn't see it as a bad arrangement.
Jay visited the summer before Lily turned 2, and since then I've always told him we'd have a place waiting for him any time he was nearby for a visit. When he left on his biking around the world adventure, I really believed that he would someday make it back here, to the Midwest, with Lauren, and they would fill our guest room for a few nights. I was so looking forward to hearing in-person accounts of their adventures. Somehow I think the guest room will always feel like it is waiting for them.
Jay was an amazing storyteller, in large part because of how much he wrote and read. He knew how to turn a phrase, and that is part of what made his blogging so compelling. I will miss his storytelling.
***
I've checked again, and the flights are still double what I can afford.
I hate death.
***
We've all met them - the people that teach us something we just didn't get before. They probably don't even know that they're teaching it, and maybe you don't know you're learning. At least, that's how it is for me.
Jay Austin and I, along with 14 other classmates, once got Master's degrees. What I learned from this amazing group of individuals is that we all come from different places, and those different places help shape who we are and how we think. Despite how different we might be, despite how at odds our political views might be, we are all still people. And because we are still people, we each owe one another common the common courtesy of civility.
Even better is to put forth the effort to understand where the other person is coming from, and thus move from civility to friendship, despite differences. And that is what Jay did so well.
As I work to instill virtue and goodness into my children, this lesson - that people matter, that it's worth the effort even if you hold drastically different views, that civility and friendship aren't dependent upon similarities - is one I hope they learn from me as I learned it from him.
Now, 8 years after Georgetown, my religious beliefs and political positions haven't changed significantly at all. But what HAS changed, or what I hope has changed, what I've tried to change, is how I view people who hold opinions different than my own. And Jay was a big part of helping me get there.
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| In 2013, Jay visited us and we toured the popcorn plant nearby. Gowned with hair nets and beard nets and all manner of safety gear, it's a tour and a time I cherish. |
