December 17, 2006
A Survivor Memory about Not Watching Survivor
Today — or yesterday, once I finish writing this — is the ten-year anniversary of the Survivor: Cook Islands finale, which aired on December 17, 2006.
I didn’t need to look this up — it’s a date that has stuck with me, albeit for reasons indirect to Survivor itself. Cook Islands, beyond being one of Survivor’s most memorable seasons, resonates with me because it was the first Survivor finale I didn’t watch live. Survivor finales were a big deal in the McNutt household, and when I woke up that morning I had planned out viewing it with my family, home from college for Christmas.
Those plans changed when I got word that my high school friend Kyle had died following a car accident the night before. It’s the kind of news you don’t really prepare for — I was one of the few among this group of friends who went away for university (albeit an hour away), and so I was less close to Kyle than others, but the idea of him being gone at 20 was nonetheless difficult to fathom.
[I’d include a photo of me and Kyle, or even just Kyle, here, but I don’t think I have any of them handy. There’s some photos kicking around on a hard drive somewhere, but those are in my office.]
Kyle’s death resonates with me in many ways, but two stand out. One was the way it highlighted how our lives are shaped by our different relationships: when I attended Kyle’s funeral, the first I’d attended for a non-family member, I was struck by how much the version of Kyle being presented by his family was not the Kyle I knew.
That shouldn’t have been surprising, maybe: of course he’s going to be different with his family than he is in the halls at school, or hanging out with me and my friend Ryan after they drove down to visit me at university. But when I read his obituary it sounded like a different person, and it wasn’t until the funeral that I realized everyone there saw Kyle differently, and that was just how life works, especially with someone still caught between childhood and adulthood in the eyes of the world.
The second, though, was why I missed that Survivor finale. That night, our group of friends reunited in the parking lot at our high school to throw a football around. It was what we did every day at lunch, Kyle included, and it was a way to help us process what was happening. These were friends I usually tried to see when I was home from school, but it felt particularly important to see them that night. While my instinct is often to process things independently, it was a reminder of the value of community, and the way those communities continue to be a part of our lives after we’ve “left” them (like if, say, you moved to another country as I did).
And so tonight I think about Kyle as I do each December — it was hard to imagine life without him then, but on this anniversary it’s maybe too easy to imagine how life might’ve been different if he was here. That’s the joy and pain of perspective, and I take the lessons learned from that with me now and on each and every future December 17.
