Town of Olive

Thursday, in the gray and wet and cold, a 16 year old in Killian’s school named Max left his home just after a near sunless dawn, went to the Ashokan Reservoir, at a dividing weir called the Lemon Squeeze, and hurled his body off the bridge. He paused long enough to phone the police and tell them what he was about to do. Then, a moment later, ended his life. His parents have no closure. There are days when I think there is no such thing as closure. Then, I imagine there is a book being written, called The Town of Olive, and all the stories in it become inspirational life lessons for millions around the world, and people find true comfort in the wisdoms of this book. I imagine this town called Olive as a later day epicenter of human struggles directly informed by our ebb from or flow toward the divine. God, in this book, wants us to find each other and to love one another. But, we’re the ones, we people of the town of Olive, who make these stories a really good read—a potboiler. Max ripped out the pages of his story before it was finished. The other stories change too, because of these ripped out pages. Some of the changed stories get edited out because they are not inspirational—stories about bitterness, regret, too much drinking, being stuck… And, some become the best stories in the book.

That same day, Killian went to school at 11:00 a.m., after having a bad morning with pain. He’d done so much morphine and was so worn out by the pain (as well as the final radiation treatment for the disease in his arm), that he wasn’t sure he could make it through school. We went to a café, and after tea and a tart he said he thought he’d like to go. When he got to school at least a hundred kids were wearing blue shirts that read, “Team Killian” on the front, and “Just Appreciating Life” on the back. A girl named Gabriel, inspired by Killian, made the shirts. The project is, as I understand it, an expression of recent positive changes in her life, a new direction for her. The counselor at the school phoned me a couple of hours later to say that she had spoken with Killian about Max and that he seemed upset, saying to her, “it’s not fair.” I asked if it seemed as if I should come get him, and she didn’t think so. By the end of the school day, the parking lot was ridiculously full, cars parked every which way. All the parents felt they needed to be there for their sons and daughters. I, myself, had turned down several offers to pick up Killian to insinuate my car there. Nobody was “thinking green.” Killian got in the car and told me about the t-shirts, saying, “I felt the love, I did, but it was so weird that it was on the same day Max committed suicide—this message in everyone’s face.” I told him that the counselor had phoned me. He said, “why would she phone you?” I said, “because you seemed a little upset when she spoke to you.” Killian’s face screwed up all perplexed, “I didn’t speak to a counselor today.” I let it go. His perceptions have been changing. My new prayer is for his perceptions not to stress him out or upset him