Since before I could remember, I’ve always looked up to someone and, since I’m quite short, this was never a difficult thing. Be it my mother, my older sister’s best friend, or my grandma, I’ve always had a role model in my life. However, there was one person in my life that was much more influential, much closer to my heart of hearts. Although I didn’t get a lot of time with him, I will always consider Kyle Meek to be my best friend.
He moved to my school district from New Jersey when I was in the second grade. A bundle of fury, he was so different from all the other students. All the pent up rage within him bubbled to the surface in ruinous and destructive actions. Kyle use to hit his aid, run away, scream, and refuse to do work. I remember coming home from school one day and my mother had asked me how my day was. Immediately I said, “Kyle had a bad day…” When questioned further as to why he had a bad day, I simply stated, “Because in art class I had to do this-” and I made bob and weave motions as if I were avoiding objects being hurled at my head.
Little did I know that he was dying. You see, Kyle had a fatal disease called Duchene’s Muscular Dystrophy, which ate away at his muscles and inevitably led to his much too early demise. Looking back on it now, the signs were so obvious. Bit by bit I watched his strength ebb away from him. His youthful body began to deteriorate and by the third grade he was confined to a wheelchair because his legs were too weak to support his weight. I saw the anger within him boil and fester as his freedoms and liberties were taken from him one by one. But, in those early years, I didn’t pay him much heed. I knew him as the angry boy that was Gianni’s best friend, and I felt pity for him.
When I hit the middle school, I got to know Kyle a little better. He had learned to master his anger at what life had thrown him, and he’d come to accept his fate. We started to hang out during school in the nurse’s office or the office since we both got heat exhaustion quite easy and those were the two coolest rooms in the whole school. By that time he’d gotten an electric wheelchair which he’d mastered with ease. I remember standing in the empty hallway and I’d see him zip by, and then a few moments later his aid Mr. Lipton would come panting up to me asking which way he’d went! Kyle was an absolute card… My favorite memory of him was in seventh grade. I was sitting in Mr. Melamud’s science class on the second floor. It was completely silent with the exception of the tiny sound of twenty or so pencils scribbling. All of a sudden, there was this loud BANG!! Mr. Melamud and I rushed out of the room to see poor Gianni squished against a locker as Kyle went forward and backed his wheelchair into him repeatedly! (It was all in jest of course) Oh God, I laughed so hard I saw tears! He always did things like that. Dr. Wiesenthal used to kid with Kyle, saying he’d pay Kyle five bucks to run over someone, and ten bucks if he left tire marks!
But, in the end I knew that it was all not going to last. First day of eighth grade I came in excited and happy to be at the top of the food chain again. I waited expectantly for Kyle to show up but he never did. When I got home that evening mom said Tina (his mother) had called saying that Kyle was in the hospital… He couldn’t breathe and they had him on oxygen, but that he was good and stable. Uneasy but reassured, I went to bed knowing that he’d be alright and that I’d see him when he got out. But I never did. The next morning mom told me that he had passed away around 5:30 AM. My heart had dropped into my shoes and I screamed at her: “You told me he was alright! You told me he was stable! You said he’d make it through the night! You LIED to me!!” Never in my life had I felt such a stab of pain and loss as I did when I heard that Kyle had died. And I wept openly. I was too shocked to cry when my own grandmother had died a few short years earlier, but I sobbed for Kyle because the pain of losing him was too great and the guilt of not having spent more time with him was suffocating. Even as I type these words my eyes sting with tears and my heart is clenched with the agony of loss as if it had just happened today.
I missed so much school those first few weeks after his death. I was too depressed to want to go and didn’t see any point in being there if Kyle was not. The day he died, Gianni and I spent hours on the phone comforting each other and pouring over old memories and yearbooks like nostalgic old men. At the open casket wake and funeral, I couldn’t bring myself to look at him. I was ashamed of my tears, knowing that Kyle would’ve hated to see me so sad. He’d have said, “Sara-Elizabeth,” (because he didn’t like anyone to call me by anything but my full formal first name), “Why are you crying? You know I’m no longer in pain. Stop feeling sad for me!” But I couldn’t help it! He had always been there, lurking in the shadows of my peripheral vision, and now that he wasn’t I felt lost. I looked up to him because he was so strong even within a sea of pain.
We’d made bracelets, Gianni and I, and past them out to Kids he was close to in the school. Kyle had touched so many hearts in just fourteen short years… They read: Kyle Meek- “Pain is inevitable, suffering is optional.” That was his favorite quote. To this day I still wear it and, when I feel lonely, I look at it and remember the boy from my youth that had so changed my view of the world. He made me feel important. Kyle proved to me that having a disability did not make you weak unless you let it. He is and always has been my inspiration to carry on, even in the face of adversity. Even though Kyle is no longer alive, he still lives in my heart. Every day I miss him, and live with the guilt of not having gotten to know him better. However, the youthful wolf-loving, yu-gi-o card addict that promised to run over all my enemies will never be forgotten. And I know he wouldn’t want me to still be sad over his passing even though I realize I can’t help it. When someone so passionate and fun and great as Kyle Meek dies, it’s hard to feel anything but pain and loss. Yet, I will always have those memories with him, and that’s what’s important.
