A crashed plane leaves no body. In the church, the scene was strange. In part, it was like a show with the punk kids looking a bit more respectable than normal. Some of the kids from the rock scene had on ties. Others stuck to their jeans and T-shirts. But you also had the hippie kids, those that Brad had spent his last few years hanging out with, living a life I just refused to understand. There were old-time friends that none of us from the high school and college years even recognized. There were the kids from when Brad and I hung out at the church in high school. We were into a youth group, always the duo that everyone thought was nuts for making our hair a different color each month. The parents of some of the kids at the church probably told them that the two of us were off limits. Like we were going to take the real God away from them with our loud music and unending questions. That ex-girlfriend from high school even showed up. I found out she was moving to Pennsylvania. Amazing how a girl can come around at a funeral and still mess with your head for a split second.

        No one there knew how to act, really. There were picture exhibits, showing all the good times. There were awards and the drawings from school. A new tree had been planted out in the field behind the building in Brad's honor. You had all of our parents, standing around somber, trying to be supportive. It was the strangest scene. On the lawn, out in front of the church, there was a circle of kids playing bongo drums. Later they moved up to the hill by the tree, circled around it and passed around a joint. Inside, the rock kids milled around nervously, talking about fun times they had with Brad on some road trip, at a show, or at a high school function. And the kids from church hung together, thinking about his soul. Me and Buchen knew some people from all the groups, wandering around and lost, we eventually found that sitting there together and not saying much at all made it all seem the closest thing to bearable. 

        The pastor made some comments. He offered no real pick-me-up answers, which was appreciated by everyone in the room. This didn't make any sense, and trying to pawn it off as an act of something beyond our own powers wouldn't have helped an ounce. This was the craziest, saddest thing most of us had seen. Let us figure out what to do next on our own. For now, we're gonna sit here and cry. And halfway through the service, I lost it for the first time since I had heard the news, wailing like a child. My best friend was gone, and I hadn't told him that he was my best friend in years.

        After the pastor spoke, a few people got up to say some things. A friend from the church crew was up there, unable to say much of anything. Trying to keep it together and take on a type of strong leader-man role (he had plans to be a youth pastor), he talked about growing up with Brad as kids and about bringing him to the church for the first time to pick up girls. A friend of Brad's from high school, a kid I never really got to know so well, go up and read a letter he'd written to Brad that week and a poem from Brad's old girlfriend. His sister got up, his younger brother to her side with his arm around her, and talked about how much she'll miss her brother; how much a family needs its members in order for things to make sense. Our old youth pastor got up, speechless. He hadn't been in this church for a while. He thought he'd probably never be back. He stated bluntly what every other person in the room was thinking: We may have lost the kindest person any one of us will ever know. And then he read from a piece of paper I had handed him the night before.
 
 

If you take two kids who share the want to do things in whatever way makes sense at that time and stick them into a church, you'll get some friends. Take the same kids and make them love the same crazy music, the same kind of fun, the same kind of burning to do something, the same passion to do it all now before it's too late, you'll get two best friends. Take them and put them into a 15 X 15 dorm room made of cinder blocks and you'll get some friction.

        Brad was my best high school friend and my freshman year college roommate. We shared everything. But things change. And they change at such different speeds. The second you really begin to understand, or the second you're forced to really understand what a friendship is all about, those roommate fights and differences disappear. I wish more than anything that I'd have realized it sooner. 

        I cannot explain what guilt is. What I remember is driving on highways and singing along to bands that have made a million dollars by now. These are good memories and I don't have any idea what his last memories of me were. His mom told me that on the way to the airport to fly down to Florida, she asked him if he'd heard from me lately. "No," he replied. "We don't talk much these days. But Adam's just being Adam. He'll come around." Maybe by now I have. But maybe he didn't say anything like that. Maybe he said: "Heard from Adam? Are you kidding? Adam's an asshole." I don't think that's the case, although I deserve it. The kid was kinder than kids were. 

        I can't think of a story that wasn't told the week of the service. All good stories. If I died today, there'd be too many bad stories to tell. With Brad, I doubt anyone's got one. Tons of random kids showed up for this service. Afterward, most of us made apologies and hugged people we'd normally walk straight past on the streets. Most of us spent a lot of time thinking through our lame little things. I think everyone in the room decided to live better lives. I wonder who's forgotten. I'd like to remind them.

        We liked music. It would be hard to talk about a memory that I have with Brad that isn't somehow attached to some song or band. There is one particular week back in Muncie that I thought about over and over just before the service. The band that had put out our all-time favorite record was gong to be playing in the Midwest two times in a three day period. While I went to both shows, Brad went on a week long field trip with the architecture school. I wanted him at those shows with me more than anything. I was listening to that record just a few days before the service and recognized again that sometimes music speaks in a way so much clearer than I can. We were driving in the car once, going to some other show, singing along loud and crazy. Brad looked at me and said: "You know, we listen to the best music in the world." And we did. 

I have a picture of you and me... Hey I remember that day. And I miss you.