Remembering the man you didn’t know

It’s a pretty normal California afternoon.

He’s already gone for a run. The Marines go twice a day at Twentynine Palms, where he’s stationed for the time being. The first comes before the sun even rises. You know those way-too-damn-early runs you tell yourself you’ll wake up and go on, those are how he starts his day. Everyday. Just him, his corpsmen and their boots. The second comes in the middle of the day, during that awkward in-between time where you don’t really know what to do with yourself. Soon he’ll be home — with his family — but for now, he runs.

He enlisted when he was 18. Growing up in Nebraska can have a humanizing effect on you. The people there are soft, down-to-earth. He was the type of boy that fit in there; he cared about people, about his family, and he wanted to help others. He knew exactly what he wanted to be; he knew that the Marine Corps was the place for him.

He got married a couple years back, her name was Sam. I was the ring bearer in the wedding; at the time my hands were smaller than the pillow that carried those wedding bands. I got sick the morning of and they had to carry me down the aisle, he didn’t mind. They had one little girl, Hannah, and then another, Madison, and they were his everything. Him and Sam had their problems but he was the type of man that wanted his kids to grow up with a father, something he hadn’t experienced. He was that type of guy, the best one you would know.

There’s a third on the way, her name is going to be Charlotte; he can’t wait.

Today is just like any other day. He’s not overseas, fighting that fight that has claimed too many young men and women. He hasn’t spent time on the battlefield yet, and he might not ever. He isn’t trained for combat, he’s one of the tech guys. I never could quite remember what his exact position was.

No, today is ordinary. He’s at home living his life, until suddenly he’s not. He collapses, mid-run, and crumples on the sun-kissed pavement. The corpsmen jogging alongside him try to help, but he’s already gone.

Sgt. Scott Kimsey, my uncle, my idol, died that day at 27 years old.

I was eight.

It’s funny how certain moments in time can leave the most detailed imprints on our memory. The night you propose, you’ll remember that speck of red wine that splashed on your fiancé’s dress, and the name of the waiter that helped you fold her napkin inside the ring.

I remember that night we got the call that my mother’s little brother had died.

I remember leaving Westroads Mall in Bellevue, Nebraska, with my mom and her mother, and my baby brother. We had just left dinner. I had made a last-ditch effort to go to the Hasbro toy store “just to look,” but it didn’t work. I remember saying goodbye to my grandma; hugging her and giving her a kiss, being reassured that she would be at my soccer game that weekend. I remember getting into that beat up Chrysler mini-van and strapping myself into the back seat. I remember my mom starting the car as the smallest drops of rain began to fall on the windshield. I remember heading home.

I remember the phone ringing; the rain was starting to pick up so my mom thought it best to pull over before answering. She responded with a soft and carefree “hello,” the same way she had always answered her phone. This call was different though, the muffled conversation behind the speaker slowly hardened her expression and pulled her from the car. I knew something was wrong, I was just too young to grasp what it was. I remember the lightning strike that broke the silence inside, while the rain intensified outside and masked the tears that began to stream down my mother’s face. I remember her dropping the phone to her side, cupping her mouth with her other hand and slipping away from my view. I remember the rain pounding the car, and my brother crying; he was too young to know what was going on. Suddenly, the door opened, my mother reemerged and told me what had happened. I remember crying in her arms in the back seat of that beat up Chrysler mini-van.

The thing that I remember the least? My uncle. Funny how that works.

For a brief time, Scott was stationed in Hawaii.

He would jump around often. It seemed like every time we got used to him being in one place he would move again. On the outside, he didn’t seem to mind. You could tell he missed his mom though.

He had invited us out to visit a while back but we never went. Flying was never something my mom enjoyed, she likes to bring up that “terrifying” flight she took just a month after the attacks on the World Trade Center. Put ‘plane’ and ‘ocean’ in the same sentence and it was a definite no. Scott knew that so he never pushed. We would see each other when he moved back, there was time.

It’s hard to think about that now. When you’re so young you don’t quite understand how fickle time can be. There’s always more time until there just isn’t.

I have a picture of Sgt. Scott Kimsey hanging in a frame above my bed. He’s sitting on the back of a Humvee, fatigues and all, in some desert. I don’t know where the photo was taken, I guess I never really thought to ask. It’s not the best photo but it’s the best I have; it keeps him in my thoughts. I don’t keep it to mourn, but to remind me to live like he lived: every day like it was his last, treating people decent, being a good man and a good husband and a good father. It’s clichéd, but he was the best man I never knew.

Sometimes I ask why.

That intoxicating and maddening question that we’re all eventually confronted with is something I will never fully understand. Why did he have to go? Why then? Mothers aren’t supposed to bury their children; I could never rationalize why it had to be this way. I was angry for a while. I tried to talk to God when I was younger, tried to bargain. There was a song I would listen to by MercyMe called “Homesick.”

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It talks about losing a loved one, about knowing where they are but not understanding why they’re there. I knew God was supposed to love, I just didn’t understand how taking away someone like Scott showed that love. Any time I listened to that song I wept. My mom would somehow find the strength to calm me and tell me that God had a plan and I just had to believe I would see Scott again someday.

The kid in me found comfort in that. Now that I’m older, entering the same phase of life that Scott didn’t see through, I’m less sure.

I know he died of sudden cardiac arrest. It went untreated — a missed diagnosis — all those years despite the heart problems that run rampant throughout both sides of my family tree.

I still don’t know why.

As time has gone on, the things that seem to continue to slip from memory are the actual moments I spent with Scott.

He wasn’t around often, jumping from base to base, but he was there for the big moments. He was there when it really mattered. As I get older I catch myself thinking I remember more about the death than I do the life. I think in a way, that happens with most of us when loved ones die. He wasn’t a perfect man by any means, his mother and sister will attest to that, but in my eyes he is a role model, a figure that inspires me day in and day out. I feel a connection to him, one that keeps the memory of him from dying while the memories with him fade. It’s haunting.

Scott would be 41 in January. His birthday is always especially hard for my mom. She was just 4 years older than him.

I ask about him from time to time but she still thinks about him often. This particular conversation catches her; I can tell she’s fighting back tears. We sit in silence for a few minutes while she tries to compose herself. I tell her I just want to ask about stories from when they were kids. She loves to tell one story in particular, a story I’ve heard at least a dozen times.

When they were really young, they used to stay home together, my mom and Scott, while my grandma went to work. My mom’s dad wasn’t in the picture so it was just her and Scotty (that’s what my grandma likes to call him).

“The little 7-Eleven was right around the corner, over by the community pool and I couldn’t leave because if (my mom) called and I didn’t answer the phone, we’d get in big trouble. So I had to be there,” my mom said. “So I’d give him the money and he’d pedal as fast as he could around the corner, get a bunch of candy and come back and then we’d eat it all before Grandma got home. We did that a lot. He wasn’t very old, he wouldn’t even have been 10, probably between 7 and 8, pretty young really.”

They’d eat all the candy before my grandma would get home in the evening, so that she wouldn’t know Scott was riding around by himself on the side of the road, and then do the whole thing again the next day.

My mom tells that story the exact same way every time. Whether she consciously knows it or not, it’s the best way to describe him. Scott would fall on a grenade if it meant protecting someone else, just like he’d ride his bike a mile to a gas station to get you a candy bar if you really wanted it. That selflessness he displayed, sometimes so effortlessly, is something I’ve always tried to emulate. In a way, it makes his memory immortal.

I remember one Christmas when Scott got me this monster gift. I was a little kid, not older than 5, and he got me this 4-foot-tall Elmo that was bigger than me. The best part was the only reason Scott even got it was because he knew the sheer size of this towering thing would drive my mom insane (it did) because I would want to take it everywhere with me (I did). As an adult he would pounce on every opportunity to mess with my mom. I guess in retrospect, that’s where I get my unyielding sarcasm.

Other similarities exist too, between Scott and I; my grandma will sometimes look at me and think about him, telling me how much I remind her of her son. We look alike, especially when I’m not wearing my glasses. I like to use humor as a way to make others feel better, or as a way to break the tension of an awkward situation; Scott liked to do the same. They like to tell me that, despite our shared tendencies to act like children trapped in adult bodies, we were both mature beyond our years.

Those looks are hard — when she looks at me and sees Scott — but I understand them. It’s hard to lose someone, especially a child, and have a constant reminder of them whenever you look at someone else. She still remembers him, she still has those memories of Scott, the person.

I, on the other hand, live in that space in between, surrounded by fleeting memories of time spent together and powerful reminders of what Scott stood for. When I was younger I wanted to be exactly like him. I had these grandiose dreams of joining the Marines and following in his footsteps. I thought that would help ease the pain of not having him around anymore. But as I have aged, I’ve recognized that I don’t have to be him to honor him. I’m my own man, but I’ve become such by emboldening myself to care, respect and love, all things that have become synonymous with his memory.

His death has shaped my life. I know I’ll see him again someday, and when that time comes I’ll look him in the eyes and say “I lived, just like you showed me.”