A Neon Promise

Every time we drive past the old farm with the chipped white wooden fence, with all the crosses and bouquets lining the side of the street, I always look for that giant multi-colored Star of David that they hung there for you. The one your father carved with his own hands, just days after it happened. The one the neighbors wanted to take down because it was too loud, too bright, too overtly Jewish. I heard they succeeded once, but by the next week it was there again, and it looked like it had been polished and re-painted.

I was there when your father and uncle nailed it together, gray-faced and sweaty, determined to keep their hands from being hammered and their eyes dry. I watched them while I stood next to my mother, squeezing her hand tight inside mine, watching your uncle’s Adams apple throb up and down as he tried to will his tear ducts to dry up. He could barely make eye contact with anyone.

I always thought it was beautiful. The contours of the wood, the way the colors overlap each other with a sort of vividness that I’d imagine you’d like, the smoothness from the hours of sanding and the hundreds of fingertips that touched it. When the sun hits it just right, the colors sparkle and light up like a neon sign was nailed to the side of the fence.

I still have the card your dad gave me, the one that has your face on it and says not to drive drunk or high. When my friends see it in my wallet, they think it’s a credit card or an ID card, and when they see the face of an 18-year-old boy with the words “Mark’s Promise” scrawled in bubbly letters at the top, they are immensely confused. They ask me who you are and I don’t know what to tell them. I barely knew you, not really. I explain what happened and they all look at me with this sympathy etched into their faces, and I want to say no—that’s not the point, that’s not the point at all. The point isn’t to feel bad for me. This has nothing to do with me. The point is that we have to do something.

Sometimes, in those moments before I fall asleep when millions of thoughts speed through my mind, I think about your family, your friends. I think about your best friend. How could anyone stand to lose someone so close to them? Your best friend, the one who was there with you throughout elementary school, who slept at your house hundreds of weekends, who wanted to graduate with you in the fall. I think about how unfair it is for him to lose you. And then I remember that he was the one driving the car.

- Megan Shaw '11