An Effort to Make Sense

It’s amazing what can happen in a day.

Yesterday, I lost my dear friend Bryan Raybon to cancer. He recently turned 33 years old, two years older than I will be tomorrow. I’m still trying to figure out what all of this means to me.

After finding out, I was at a loss for what to do. I couldn’t cry. I couldn’t scream. I just felt numb, unable to process this thing that had happened so far away and yet meant so much to me. I went for a long walk in the chacras to try and get some clarity, but found none. Understandably distracted when I returned home, I had forgotten that my host family had planned to celebrate my birthday yesterday since we wouldn’t be able to celebrate it on my actual birthday. I was reminded by my host niece, Beri Luz, running into my room singing “Feliz Cumpleaños” and excitedly talking about my cake waiting for me downstairs. Trying to regroup, I headed downstairs to try and clear my head and was immediately touched by the little celebration my host family put together, complete with beautifully arranged plates of delicious food and several rounds of “Feliz Cumpleaños” before we all devoured the gorgeous chocolate cake they had purchased. The only thing was, my buddy and host nephew, Cesir, was nowhere to be found and no one knew where he was. I gave them all hugs before heading out the door to a scheduled meeting I had with a youth dance group to talk with them about “Gringos Útiles.”

I had been torturously waiting all of December for someone in my site to show me some form of motivation toward my project. After delivering my shpeel about what I hoped to accomplish with “Gringos Útiles,” the organizer of the group, a man I’m coming to respect exponentially every time I hang out with him asked if he could include his group in my plans. He wanted to offer workshops to begin teaching other youth in town how to do the traditional dances that his group has become so well-known for. This was exactly what I was hoping would happen as a result of my work here, but was expecting it much farther down the line. Of course, I was floored and made arrangements to begin incorporating his group into my plans for January.

While with this group, a car drove up driven by my soccer coach friend with three guys from my soccer team in the back seat, one of which was Cesir. They wanted me to hop in and head off with them, but I explained that I was in the middle of something and it would have to wait. They said they’d be back in 20 mins. Needless to say, I was confused and they wouldn’t provide any details.

I finished with the youth group and phoned the coach. He came and picked me up and took me to a restaurant in town where a group of guys from my soccer team were all sitting at a table. I greeted all of them and noticed a giant cake on the table. The coach told me that Cesir had informed him my birthday was coming up and that they wanted to do something special for me. I looked at Cesir and he just smiled and asked me whether I was surprised. Overwhelmed by their kindness, I wasn’t sure what to say. In my best bad Castellano, I thanked them all for being my friends and for allowing me to be a part of their team. It was a truly beautiful gesture and I felt extremely grateful once again for this beautiful community I’ve been gifted with.

The last time I talked to Bryan on the phone was particularly difficult. The person I knew sounded different. He was understandably bitter about what was happening to him, having to plan his own memorial in his early 30s. He was in a lot of pain, not wanting to overly dope himself up with painkillers. The sarcastic wit and merciless sense of humor I had come to know and love and that helped us use laughter as a way of processing the horrors of what his cancer diagnosis meant was gone, replaced by a blunted version of himself, very much staring the empty question of death in the face.

I remember feeling extremely impotent during and after this conversation with him, unable to rely on who we had been before I left as a guide for how to interact with him then. And yet, even through all of that, he was able to say something I will never forget. He told me that he was so proud of me for doing what I’m doing here in Perú and that he wished he’d had more time in his life to do the kinds of things I was doing in my life. As much as it killed me to hear him talk like that, I respected the brutal honesty with which he made that statement.

I have a feeling for the rest of my life the magnitude of what can happen in a day will always be something that has the potential to sucker-punch the shit out of me or to fill me with awe and gratitude for existing. Or both simultaneously. I’d like to think that Bryan has left me and so many others some sense of wisdom about our own lives as a result of what he went through: while there are always reasons to put off those things you want to do with your life, no tomorrow is more tangible than today.

As much as I struggle to see how something so horrible happening to such a beautiful human being can be spun positively, I can’t help but think about how I’ve grown and gotten to know myself better as a result of how I reacted to his illness. He taught me that when someone is going through something horrible in their lives, the last thing they want is for everyone to start treating them like a victim. He also taught me that a well-timed cancer joke can be just as therapeutic as a quick squirt of morphine from an IV. His last lesson was to teach me that friendship apparently does not end at death; it’s just a little harder than making a long-distance phone call from Perú. For these lessons and more I will be forever changed as a result of knowing Bryan Raybon. Just looking at the hundreds of messages of love on Facebook alone, I have a feeling I’m not the only one he’s affected this profoundly and knowing this helps me deal with some of the hurt.

I’ll end this with my favorite short piece written by Borges:

Delia Elena San Marco

We said goodbye at one of the corners of Plaza Once. From the opposite pavement, I looked back; you had turned to wave. It was five o’clock in the afternoon. A river of traffic and people ran between us. How could I have known that that river was the sad Acheron, from which there is no return?
We did not see each other again, and a year later you were dead. Calling up that memory now, I look at it and think it was false. Behind our inconsequential parting was eternal separation.
After dinner last night I did not go out but, in an effort to understand these things, I reread Plato’s last teaching, which he put into his master’s mouth. When the flesh dies, I read, the soul escapes. Now I no longer know whether the truth lies in Plato’s dismal view or in our innocent farewell. Because if souls do not die, it’s quite right that goodbyes should not be overstated.
To say farewell is to deny separation. It is to say, ‘Today we played at separating but tomorrow we’ll see each other again.’ Men have invented farewells because they know they are in some way immortal, even if they think themselves incidental and ephemeral.
Delia, one day – beside what river? – we shall resume this indeterminate conversation and ask each other if once, in a city that was lost on a plain, we were Borges and Delia.

Thank you for being, Bryan.