His Name Was Larry
The boy that made me laugh — and live
He used to make me laugh. Oh, how he would make me laugh.
He was rambunctious and silly and fearless. He ate crickets. His chubby boy-hands were always slightly sweaty. I can picture his face as if I saw him yesterday — brown hair sticking up in odd directions, brown eyes under heavy eyelashes, a dimpled chin, full cheeks and olive, sun-kissed skin as if he had a perpetual tan. Maybe he did. I think the sun loved him.
But I haven’t seen Larry for twenty-two years.
I first met him as an anxious nine year old the summer before fifth grade. It was going to be the fourth elementary school I attended after moves that took me across three states. I didn’t want to unpack, let alone make friends. It was too hard to leave them. But Larry really didn’t give me an option.
He hopped over the six foot fence in my backyard one day and decided we were going to be friends and so we were.
And that really summed Larry up.
He was my first friend that lasted more than a school year. We walked our dogs together, my golden retriever and his Rottweiler, between my house and his. They became friends too.
The day of my tenth birthday, Larry was the first to arrive, skipping right into the kitchen to grab the best snacks. Then he found the water balloons. He thought it was hilarious that I didn’t fill them up enough so they wouldn’t pop, no matter how hard he whipped them at me. My mom sent him home.
He came back though. He always did.
We spent fifth grade in the same class; me hesitatingly trying to fit in as the new girl while Larry goofed around and made me laugh.
One sweltering day the summer before sixth grade, we were exploring the woods in the front of my parents house when Larry stumbled upon a yellow jacket nest. They swarmed. The adage about being chased by a bear and only needing to run faster than the slowest person applies to yellow jackets too. I, unfortunately, was the slower person. Larry got away with only a few stings while I ended up with fourteen.
Even as one of his eyes swelled from a sting on his eyebrow, he laughed as I frantically stripped down to my underwear, screaming and flicking yellow jackets off my arms and legs, shaking the little, buzzing monsters out of my long hair.
That year, we befriended a girl who happened to have curly hair and dubbed ourselves the Three Stooges — Larry, Curly, and Mo (short for Morgan, a nickname I have had since I was a toddler).
Curly got engaged last week.
In seventh grade, Larry and I played spin the bottle and he kissed me. His hands were still pudgy and a little sweaty and his lips were wet. I laughed. It was the only time he didn’t.
The summer following seventh grade Larry was riding his bike down the suburban street he lived on. He rode out into the intersection of the much faster double yellow road I lived on, and in a moment I wish with every ounce of me I could change, he was hit by a car.
I was told he didn’t suffer. His casket was closed — he wasn’t wearing a helmet. I used to wish I could have seen him one more time, but now I know better. Seeing Larry, laying still, wouldn’t have been right. In my memories, he is always moving; jumping, running, and spinning.
And laughing.
People call me an old soul, a mother hen, and comment on my caution and prudence. I suppose suffering a loss as great as Larry, when I was only twelve, irrevocably changed me. As an adolescent, I never had an invincibility complex. I knew life was fragile and unfair, that it can be ripped from you, tragically and without reason.
I remember snippets of his wake and funeral. I remember talking to one of the boys that was riding his bike with Larry when the accident happened. That boy would become my first love.
I remember Larry’s mother hugging me so tight I couldn’t breath. She told me how much Larry liked me, how he always had ‘a crush’ on me. Although she said it with the best intentions, it felt like a swift punch to the gut.
She called me Megan but I didn’t correct her.
When I turned thirteen, a couple months after he was gone, I wrote him a letter. I promised him I wouldn’t waste a day of my life. I would live it for the both of us. I have kept my word and have made many life altering decisions based on that promise.
I believed Larry watched over me, especially during those first couple of years. I used to quickly wrap myself in a towel after showers and change in my closet, just in case he was there. I talked to him every day.
I still do talk to him now and then. Sometimes when I’m happy, to share the immeasurable joys life can bring, sometimes when I need him, like when my grandmother passed away and I needed to make sure he would watch over her, and sometimes when I’m lost and need a friend.
I am not a religious person. I do not believe in heaven. I do not believe in reincarnation. I do not believe in ghosts.
But I talk to Larry.
Sometimes I think I see him — a waiter filling my water glass, someone pushing a cart by me at the grocery store. My mom told me his parents had twins, a boy and a girl. The boy looks just like Larry, she told me. I don’t know how I feel about that, because he isn’t Larry. But maybe a part of him lives in that little boy and I am happy for his parents.
I hope they are well.
I passed the corner of the accident every day as I grew up. There are no longer flowers on the hill beside the road when I pass it today, when I visit my parents who never left that house they bought when I was nine, but I think of Larry nevertheless.
More often than not, the memories of him make me smile, but I do still cry. I believe I always will.
My oldest daughter is about to turn eleven. I can’t fathom her facing the loss I faced a year from now. I know I cannot always protect her, but I hope she has many more years before tragedy befalls someone she loves. I hope that when it does happen, she is able to learn from the loss.
As a mother, I imagine the gaping, wrenching time Larry’s parents had to live through. Have to live through. I am not sure if I could. As such, when it comes to my children, I tend to be guarded and wary. My heart aches when I see them riding their bikes but I try to smile.
Above all the over-protectiveness, though, I encourage them to have fun, to be brave, to let the little things go. As they grow up, I hope they grab life by the horns and ride the shit out of it. I appreciate every day I have with them. I appreciate every day. Period.
That’s the lesson Larry’s loss brought to my life.
I am still living for the both of us and through the tears that inevitably come when I think about him, I remember to laugh.
And to live.
