Charlie

It’s always a horrible tragedy when someone young loses his life. It’s unsettling; like something is not right with the world. 

When my brother was eighteen, a boy he’d played baseball with died. Charlie Baumhower. He’d been drinking on campus and fell from an 11^th story balcony and was impaled on a fence below. It shook all of us up. It’s bothered me for twenty-three years now. It doesn’t seem fair that one moment of stupidity could have such tragic consequences. He had so much life ahead of him.

I went to Charlie’s funeral, along with about a thousand other people. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Baumhower in the receiving line. Mrs. Baumhower seemed sedated. Still, I wondered how she could even stand up and not crumple into a sobbing mass. It made me nervous to inch closer to her in line and face such grief. I didn’t know what to say and so smiled and blurted out to her that I’d gotten married. She didn’t say anything in response. I don’t blame her. I’m not sure she even knew who I was, or connected me with Ryan in any way.  But I knew who she was. We’d been to their house for baseball celebration cookouts. I’d thought of them as a golden family with a beautiful house in West Chester. People who couldn’t be touched by tragedy.

I’ve thought about Charlie so often over the years. It was a tragedy that haunted me. He missed out on getting married, having kids, and everything else that the other boys his age, like Ryan, lived to enjoy. 

Then, when I was working the polls this past May, Mrs. Baumhower was suddenly checking in at my registration table. She stood right in front of me, looking old and ordinary. I felt like her tragedy showed in her posture, and it struck me as odd that all the people milling around had no idea what she’d been through; that she’d lost her son when he was only eighteen. I wanted to say something to her, to tell her I knew Charlie. But it seemed so inappropriate. I barely knew him, really. And didn’t have anything to say to her other than that he’d played baseball with Ryan and that I went to his funeral. I wanted to acknowledge that  I’d known him and let her know that Charlie was not forgotten. But the circumstances were too strange. Though I’m sure she’s gone on with her life and wouldn’t break down at the mention of his name, I wondered how it would affect her to suddenly be reminded of him in such an unlikely place: by a pollworker that she didn’t even know.

I let her leave the precinct without saying anything to her, but I still wish I had. I still wish I’d just made a simple statement to let her know that we still remember Charlie.