Two deaths, two stories, two lessons

I work for a weekly college newspaper.

Excuse me, that is incorrect.

I live and breathe my college newspaper. Not to mention, I dream about it too.

I used to be sort of normal… maybe?

In any case, it is what it is, and I have become a monster–chasing ambulances, getting excited about train wrecks, hoping for something big to happen so I can cover it. Go ahead, judge me.

My heart hasn’t turned completely into a rock, though. I promise.

I’ve teared up during interviews, I’ve cried just because I’m tired and I’ve spent a lot of time reflecting on two stories that have touched my heart deeply.

A week or so before our first issue, a man died on campus. Our entire staff happened to walk out just as the ambulance was pulling up, so of course, we covered it. We found out the man worked at the University, so we decided to do a feature on him for part of the front page of our print edition.

Last Friday, another man died. This man was also affiliated with the University–a beloved, well-known figure in its history. Everyone in the community and beyond was devastated. So of course, we covered it. We also wrote a feature on him for the next Thursday, which took up our entire front page.

I was fortunate enough to cover both the breaking news of these two men’s deaths and to write the feature stories on them for our print edition.

I talked to their relatives. I talked to their coworkers. I looked through old pictures of them.

I discovered these men who I never met–learned about their intricacies, their faults, their successes, their personalities–after they were already buried.

One man was a dishwasher who never finished the 8th grade and spent the early parts of his life pushing a mule in a field under the constant watch of a white man. He had children by several different women. His brother said he “wasn’t no church-goin’ man.” Although he had a small sphere of influence, the people I talked to spoke well of him–he touched their lives. He retired, then started working again. He had a heart attack after work on the way to McDonald’s, his favorite restaurant. He was 66.

The other man earned his doctorate degree, was a veteran and was able to enjoy retirement with his family. He attended football games, grilled barbecue chicken and corn-on-the-cob with his family on the weekends, and was considered a living legend. He inspired people he never knew, had a building named after him and slipped peacefully into eternity with his loved ones praying around him at a hospice center in his hometown. He was 93.

I have shed tears over both of these men. In their own ways, both of them are inspiring.

Juxtaposing the two lives–lives lived within a mile of each other, lives lived working for the same institution, lives lived with supposedly “equal opportunities”– is painful for me to think about.

Putting these two lives side-by-side reveals something ugly, but it also reveals something beautiful.

I think you can derive the ugly for yourself.

The beautiful thing about thrusting these two ideas (that’s all they really are to me, really–stories people tell, pictures from a time that is forgotten, a funeral bulletin–they’re not flesh and blood. They’re ideas now.)

But the beautiful thing about them is despite the stark contrast of their lives, despite the number of people they touched and despite the different worlds they emerged from, these two ideas were once living, breathing men. They had relationships. They were loved. They cared about someone. They are missed.

So how do we define success at the end of one’s life?

Was it the dishwasher or the beloved University legend who had it all?

I can’t honestly answer that question. It goes much deeper than the list of accomplishments a man dies with or the amount of money he leaves to his children.

All I know is that from these two men I have learned that every man is just that– a man (and I use man here in the all-encompassing humanity man, not the male gender).

Every man dies.

I don’t know what that means to you. I don’t know if that scares you, motivates you or pisses you off.

But it’s true. No matter what kinds of lives those men led, they are now equal here on earth. Just ideas.

What are we living for? Are we living for how we will be remembered? Are we living for eternity? Are we living for the moment at hand?