“One must never despair upon losing something, whether it is an individual or an experience of joy or happiness; everything returns even more magnificently. What has to decline, declines; what belongs to us, stays with us, for everything works according to laws that are greater than our capacity for understanding and that only seem to contradict us. You have to live within yourself and think of ALL of life, all of its millions of possibilities, openings, and futures in relation to which there exists nothing that is past or has been lost.”
A true story I wrote for my Concept and Story class.
Another day, another show to produce. Kevin arrives at school and sits down in the control room to begin parsing the typical flood of morning announcement e-mails into a news script. He begins cutting and pasting them into the script, but one of them caught his eye:
“Sorry to hear about what happened, Billy will be missed.”
“What happened?” It couldn’t be the same Billy he knew, he thought. He continued on with his job, sorting e-mails, trying to ignore what he was thinking. Then an e-mail from an administrator came, explaining the current situation. It was clear. His friend was gone. Incomprehensible, he had seen him just yesterday, but it was true. One of his best friends had died in a car accident early that morning, just 5 hours earlier. Kevin remembered he was looking out his bedroom window around that time, watching the rain and enjoying the cool night breeze. It was a terrible night to be driving; it was raining, and the fog was thicker than he had ever seen before. Billy was on his way home from his girlfriend’s house. She was the last one to see him.
This information was still confidential, supposed to be known only to teachers and administrators. He wasn’t sure what to do now. Should he just continue going about his work? Acting as if nothing was wrong? He decided he had to do something, at least tell someone. Just then, his friend Nikki came in the room. He can’t tell her though. She asks for help with her video project. He tries to answer her question but not reveal how upset he’s starting to become. Finally she leaves and he can relax to gather his thoughts for a second. They had done special announcements when a student had died before, but it was never while he was in charge, and never someone he knew.
Finally, the other crewmembers begin to show up. He asks his friend and assistant Pietro if he had heard what had happened. He hadn’t and he tells him, releasing the burden of feeling like the only one who knew.
The knowledge gradually begins to spread through the crew. As first period wore on one of the teacher pulls aside the few students who knew and she tells them not to tell anyone else until the principal and guidance counselor gets there. It’s too late for that anyway. People begin to gather together in the theatre and the principal and guidance counselor arrive to talk to the students.
Billy had graduated a year earlier from the tech theatre magnet and still stopped by often to help out with the shows. Everybody knew him.
Eventually, Kevin goes in with the other students in the theatre, the whole theatre department is there, everyone is signing a big sign as an impromptu memorial. Out in the hallway the art students are doing the same. He hangs around for a bit, talking to friends, but he really doesn’t much feel like being around other people so he heads back to the studio control room.
By then it became clear that there weren’t to be the usual televised announcements that day, but they still have to be done. He finishes the script and the announcements are performed audio-only over the intercom. There was to be no mention of Billy’s death in the announcements then and the announcers struggle to keep their composure.
The announcements and his daily obligations over with, Kevin begins to think of what to do next. A memorial of his own…
Not really knowing why, and not looking for anything in particular, he begins to dig through the televideo class archives looking for anything footage there may be of Billy. He spends the rest of the school day going through every last tape. An archivist at heart, any sort of tragedy seems to compel him to obsessively begin collecting any relevant data at the time. In addition to all of the videotapes, he also collects the e-mails the teachers had sent around offering their condolences. Gradually the idea of a memorial video begins to come together, and he takes the videos home to assemble.
Browsing through his iTunes playlists he finds the songs to accompany the video. As he begins to capture and edit the video the emotions of the day finally catch up to him, he had been trying to fend them off, but they all come out at once in a sudden outpouring of tears. He works through his grief and tears struggling at times to continue facing the fact that his friend, who is right in front of him, no longer exists. But he perseveres, wanting to complete the video in time for the viewing and funeral. He works for 14 hours straight to complete the video, and finishes it in a single night.
He brings the video to school the next day. Everybody is still reeling over the loss. All of the theatre people gather again in the theatre and Kevin premieres his memorial. He watches their reactions. Some are crying, some trying not to. He found his peace though and in making the video, Billy seems perhaps just a little less far away.
