The new year at Carthage has begun in the shadow of a very sad tragedy. This past Sunday evening, one of our new freshmen – a young man from Illinois named Brandon Lindsay – collapsed while reading in the Hedburg Library. He received medical attention almost immediately and was quickly transported to an area hospital- but he could not be revived and died without regaining consciousness. . . shortly before his parents arrived at the hospital, having just dropped him off at Carthage earlier that very day. Can you imagine a more wrenching experience than saying goodbye to your college freshman son (your only son) and then receiving a terrifying phone call just hours later. I cannot begin to fathom what this loss must be like for them – and for this young man’s little sister, with whom he was especially close. This guy was apparently healthy (he was going to be a member of the swim team) – so this is terribly bewildering, and one waits to see if the autopsy results will help to explain how such a thing could happen.
A short, simple memorial service was held on campus this morning, and our campus pastor, Harvard Stephens, asked me to play for it and to sing a song of mine that he likes a lot. . . Caleb’s Song, which I wrote a few years ago as a graduation present for a special voice student of mine, Caleb Sjogren. The lyrics consist of a series of questions which one might ask of one’s self at an important juncture in one’s life:
Did I make a difference? Did I share some light?
Did I bring some comfort in somebody’s night?
Did I plant some flowers? Did I sow some seeds?
Did I help a stranger? Did I see another’s need? etc.
I was so honored to have been asked to sing this for such an important occasion, but so sad to think of it being sung under such heartbreaking circumstances. It also brought to mind a couple of other grief-gripped occasions for which I had to sing in that very room. One was not a funeral or memorial service, but rather a concert in memory of a former colleague and friend, Laura Staerkel, who died quite suddenly of a brain aneurysm. The concert was for a scholarship in her honor. I was just the emcee for that program, but found myself inspired to compose a song in her memory- and was actually madly finishing it while the concert itself was underway… managing somehow to finish it just in time to sing it. “Your Music” was my tribute to this talented person who had played for several of my faculty recitals and with whom I had sung many times at the band shell. Another occasion which comes to mind was many years ago when a beloved Carthage psychology professor, Larry Hamilton, died after a long and courageous battle with cancer. I am still not sure why I was asked to sing for his memorial service, since I did not know him especially well . . . I think it was probably because his widow had heard me sing somewhat contemporary things and knew that I would be comfortable singing the song that Larry had chosen for that occasion- a neat Nancy LeMont song called “We live on Borrowed Time.” Siebert Chapel was almost completely filled for that service, which said a lot about how powerfully Professor Hamilton had connected with students and colleagues over the years. That was probably twelve years ago but it feels like yesterday. . . and although I was terribly saddened by his death, I was not grieving the way his close friends were, and so I offered up this performance as a gesture of encouragement to them and as a word of caution to all of the students in attendance. . . although we all need to remember that we live on borrowed time, and that every day is a gift.
It only occurred to me towards the very end of today’s memorial service that of the hundred-or-so persons who were in attendance, almost none of them even knew this young man who had died. I certainly had not yet met him or his parents, and yet I felt this overwhelming sense of loss – and I think we all did. But how amazing that we could feel such grief at the death of, essentially, a stranger. I guess when you are part of something like the Carthage community, you are no longer complete strangers, even when it’s someone we’ve never even met or whose name we didn’t know. But there it is – and I find myself feeling a grief that is penetrating me right to the core of my being.
pictured: The flags on the Carthage campus flying half staff in memory of Brandon.