An old friend of mine named Mark Hild grew up with Muscular Dystrophy. Word on the playground was that he probably wouldn’t live to graduate from high school. I knew him back when it barely took two hands to count my age.
On Tuesday, he went into cardiac arrest and suffered some really serious brain damage. His brain stem could no longer function enough to keep him alive. Last i heard, he was to be taken off his ventilator this afternoon. So, right now, he’s probably gone.
A fond memory of mine is of this goofy greeting we used to do for some reason. I can’t remember why or who started it, but when we were in grade school or junior high, we used to do this big, wide, window-washer wave. Like a “Hiya, Spanky” kind of thing. It was innocent, and pretty retarded, really.
“Hiya, Mark!”
“Hiya, Jeremy!”
…and later, when leaving, more ridiculous Little Rascals waving:
“So long, old pal!”
“So long, old buddy!”
Last time i saw him was in 2002, at an all-classes reunion out at our old high school. He had a breathing tube (a la Christopher Reeve) and was in his powered wheelchair, but was hardly looking like the years had touched him at all, and in fact looked for all the world like a hundred million god damn bucks. We exchanged pleasantries, and i felt sorry that we’d grown up and grown pretty far apart, but it was the greatest thrill to see him again. He was a good guy. A gentleman all the way through. I’ll never forget how happy i was to see him looking so relatively healthy. At that moment, i was thinking, ‘He’s made it this far – look at him! – he’s really going to beat all the odds and live to be an old man just like anyone else!’
I’ve never once said that i wasn’t naive. But he sure did beat a hell of a lot of odds. A hell of a lot of odds. He didn’t lose. Not really. He fucking won. He won better than any of the rest of us ever could have. And – except for a brief stint during high school when he maybe took advantage of his situation a little bit by being a little demanding of his friends, which honestly was really more comical than tragic – never did he ever display any self-pity. Not a hint. Not once; never. He pretty much acted like anybody else. You hardly ever even remembered that he was even in a wheelchair with a terminal disease and a grim overall prognosis. He just didn’t make you feel aware of it at all. He was one of us, through and through. A brother to the core.
And now he’s gone from our lives forever. But not from our memories.
I don’t believe in life after death. I don’t believe in heaven or hell. But i do believe that the collective memories of those who knew you keep your personality – if not your actual consciousness – as alive as a thing could ever really be. Our personalities, each of us, is made from bits and pieces of others’. We live on, in a way, through other people, even gradually filtering our way down generations and into the ages. Through love, we keep a part of our loved ones with us, in our conscious minds, and pass a little bit down to people who never even knew those who inhabit us.
I’ve found it increasingly hard to say goodbye to the living, and especially, to the dead. But it needs to happen, as it always does. Death is inevitable for us all.
Goodbye, Mark. Godspeed.
“So long, old pal!”
