Let me put you in the old green car with me and my dad thirty years ago. I'm in third grade. He's driving me to visit my beloved school-friend Perry. In the hospital.
This is not our first visit. It won't be the last. Perry's injury is not the fleeting, easily fixable kind. It's not the kind that's fixable at all.
(Obviously, Perry is not his real name.)
Oh, let me pick the best day. Let me pick the day that I saw Perry walk again. There he was in his pajamas, walking on his own two legs down the hall. I ran to him with a scream and we threw ourselves in each other's arms.
#
Some months before, Perry had suffered a catastrophic accident that left him brain-damaged.
I was protected from the full horror of this by my age. I couldn't see what it was going to mean for the future. Besides, as far as I was concerned, Perry wasn't different at all. He didn't talk the same...for quite some time, he didn't talk at all...but that didn't matter to me. It was his spirit I'd loved. It was the love in him I'd loved. That, if anything, was heightened by the stripping away of everything else. Yes, he was still Perry in every way that mattered.
I saw no loss. I saw no real change. I only saw my friend.
When he walked again at last, my heart burst with nothing but joy.
I never looked behind me to see what my father must have been struggling to hide. I can't imagine being a grownup in that situation--learning of the accident, knowing its full extent, knowing that a dear, kind boy had essentially been robbed of his future in a single moment. I don't know how my father, seeing the bitter triumph of those halting steps, kept from pounding the walls and screaming at God. He would have taken it on himself if he could have. He would have put himself in Perry's place in that accident. Without blinking. Without ever looking back.
He saw what was coming. I didn't.
#
I gave you the best day. Now here's the worst.
I'm in fourth grade now. Perry has just come back to school. As a special-ed kid.
He's standing in front of me on the playground in a yellow raincoat. We are ringed by unfriendly eyes. He's looking at me in confusion.
The heightening of his love is no longer a blessing. It's a curse. People are laughing at him for following me around. Worse, I don't know what to do. I don't understand what he wants, except to be with me. But how? We can't play. We can't talk. In the hospital, it was different; all we needed to do was just be together.
We can't anymore.
"No!" I tell him. "No. No."
That...he understands. He doesn't understand why. He never will. He'll never know it's killing me. That's okay, I deserve that. I deserve to be the bad guy. I *am* the bad guy.
He gives up, his last act of love to me, and goes back to the other special ed kids.
They don't keep the special ed kids in one school, they shift them around. He'll be gone soon.
#
This is why I refuse to learn lessons from things. I refuse to believe things happen for a reason. It's a lie. What reason could there have been for my friend to lose so much in one instant? What reason could there have been for him to have to endure losing me too? And hey, why was I left on my own in a situation where I didn't know how to handle him? I was nine years old. Why didn't one of the teacher aides that the government still paid for back then come and do something? It's not like nobody knew we were friends, that I had visited him every week in the hospital. Couldn't somebody anticipate that I might need a little help relating to him in these different circumstances, and with all these people pointing fingers at us and laughing?
Maybe they thought love would conquer all. *Here's* a lesson for ya: it didn't.
But though defeated, it didn't die. It still hasn't. I love you, Perry.
And the day you walked again will always be like new to me.
