Death of a 19 year old

About a year ago my phone and my mobile went at the same time. Something/someone needed to speak to me. Soon it’s the anniversary of a terrible tragedy that well and truly puts my situation into perspective. It was G. Sounding very low. He told me one of his best friends had died. And when he told me which one, the breath was knocked out of me. Now, many enormous feet have passed through my door. His friends are cute enough but mostly fairly monosyllabic and usually concealed behind shaggy fringes, stubble or Alice Cooper-style makeup. Often they have the same names, too. But this guy, R, stood out, not only because he had that hair style that looks as if he’s pressed an iron to both sides of his head - upwards - but because he was adorable, chatty, eccentric, highly strung, vague and funny. He and G shared a room in a dodgy lodging house for a while during their foundation year, and he lived with us for a few days when doing his A levels which is when we got to know him over pleasant supper chats in the garden every evening. He used to play in a band, and that’s where G went that sad day, to a kind of candle vigil outside the club where he used to play. Organised by his mum, who I never met but who must have been then, and must be now, nearing the anniversary, in tiny little bits.
What do you say? The details are sketchy but he had a freak fall from a building during an adventure abroad. My own shock and sadness was exacerbated as I thought of all those gorgeous young people thinking of their departed friend and trying to get their heads round the fact that he won't be back. Driving past the college, walking up the High Street, I kept seeing boys who look like him, driving, walking, mumbling into mobiles. How would it be if that was G I kept seeing? The death of a child is the death of the future, isn’t it, for the parents? I grieve for R’s poor parents, his little sister, his band mates, all aching terribly, still.
I came close to losing G ten minutes after he passed his driving test. He took his car, three mates, went out into the countryside and turned his car upside down in a field. Again, sketchy, but he swears he wasn’t speeding and the deserted (thank God) country road was very wet. There were guardian angels flapping away like crazy that day, because not one of them had a scratch. The iPod, which had been blaring away, was silent as they hung upside down by their seatbelts. Then, spookily, classic FM, which none of them ever listen to, came on. History doesn’t relate what it was playing, but I’m convinced it was something very, very holy.
But what to say, think, when a young, decent person dies? All the holy stuff about giving thanks for what time we did have with him. That the memories are mostly good. That life is precious, it needs to be treasured, our loved ones need to be hugged close from time to time (certainly every day before the sun goes down). That we need,however young or old, to look at our own lives and try to live them that much better?
G came back very quiet and sober from that vigil, and tells me he doesn't want to talk. It didn't stop me bursting into tears time and again over those next few weeks, as I envisagedthe poor boy’s last moments, his parents’ horror when the news broke, their empty future, my own future if it happened to me. G didn't let me, and he still doesn't really talk about it a year later, but if you’re comforting someone else, you comfort yourself.
The last time I saw his mate R it was one of those chaotic Christmas periods when people came and went. I called him ‘darling’ absent mindedly, gathering him into the general melee of my family. I’m so glad that was the last thing I said to him. And he laughed.