I'm Sorry...

If there’s one thing about Nipmuc I’ll never understand, it’s the seeming inability of its graduates to make it to their 5-year reunion. I don’t mean people are too busy with big, corporate jobs or have relocated to foreign places — the percentage of alumni who do that is slim. I’m referring to the increasing number of students for whom it is simply an impassible challenge to live until the age of 23.

I bring this up now because one of my closest friends from my young and very reckless high school days just passed away. I am in a complete state of shock — and that’s when I feel the need to write the most. Scott Bullock, always a rebel determined to be different from everyone else, was once the boy I spent a majority of my time with. He was my confidant, my friend to be mischievous with, and — though we did drift apart in our later years at Nipmuc — was someone I used to call a great friend. Since graduation (more realistically since I disappeared into the ambitious world of those Johnnie boys), we have spoken perhaps once or twice. We kept tabs of each other through the fantastic rumor-mill of Mendon… and I had only recently discovered he had really “fallen into the wrong crowd.” I guess I never suspected it to end like this.

But he’s not all. A few months ago it was Jill Carboni — a jock, a brain, and a beautiful girl with a boyfriend, a few semesters left for a bachelor’s degree, and a fantastic future. Before that it was Emily Irons, one of the sweetest girls I ever knew, and a co-worker during those long hard days at the radiology lab at Milford Hospital. Before that it was Michael Costa, a soft-spoken guy with a dry wit earning him the reputation as one of the most hilarious kids in the class. Nick Zinno, Gallegher... I'm just sick of it.

These are just a few of kids who never made it to 23. They will never get the chance to grow up, to get married, to have kids of their own. Young lives taken. I get that we are all mortal. I get that young people are often too reckless, too confident in their own strength, their own sobriety, their 4-wheel drive or their ability to absorb toxins. I get there death comes to everyone sooner or later, and for some it’s inevitably sooner rather then later. It’s just not fair.