Opinion : A Monday and a color to remember forever

For those of you wearing blue to school today, can I make a suggestion?

Whatever you wear today, when it comes out of the laundry tomorrow, put it away. Place it in the box or drawer where you keep your special treasures and favorite memories. Let that item – and your memories of Emma – become part of your story.

I’ve got a blue item – two of them actually – as a tribute to the first funeral I went to for a friend who died too young.

Randy was a teenager in Kentucky when he had his accident – a diving accident. He survived, but spent the rest of his life in a wheelchair. For most people, such accidents cut life expectancy in half. I received an email from Randy in the spring of 1999. Just a few weeks later, he was dead at age 33.

We made the long drive to Kentucky on a Friday in June. We met several of Randy’s friends and spoke to his wife. The last thing I did before leaving Kentucky was stop to buy a blue Kentucky University Wildcats cap.

I still have that cap, and still wear it at times. After nearly 16 years, it’s worn and stained and torn in spots. A dog chewed off a bit of the adjustable plastic band.

I always said I would wear that cap until I had the chance to return to Kentucky again to buy another one. It was not until 2012 that I finally had that chance. After I bought it, I told my friends about Randy, and why I bought another blue Kentucky cap.

I told them about how I remember Randy – who wanted to work like everyone else – rolling down the hall with a dust mop, singing a song about Heaven that ended with the words “I’ve got more to go to heaven for than I did yesterday.” I still play that song sometimes.

So, today, when I wear blue, it will be in honor of two special people who died too young but made a difference in the lives of those around them.

And for those of you watching someone – your son or daughter, perhaps, or nephew or niece or a friend or neighbor’s child – I have a story for you, too.

In the fall of 2002, my mom died after a two-week stay in the hospital in Iowa City. My grandfather died in a car accident exactly three weeks later.

Many of my friends said and did special things to help me through that time, but this is the one I remember most: I walked into a real estate office to talk to a woman named Charla about some community story I was working on. I had spoken to her just a few times as we looked for housing options in that town (Washington, Iowa) and also while doing stories about organizations in which Charla was involved. She had heard about the second funeral in my family in three weeks, and when I walked into her office, she greeted me with a smile that was sweet and sad and funny all at the same time.

I will remember that smile forever.

Yet, when I told Charla about that smile recently, she couldn’t remember it at all.

Today, you have a chance to do or say something that one of those people in blue will remember forever, even if you may not. A smile or high five or hug or a sentence or two –or maybe just a word or two – can help a young person who is dealing with grief in a new and daunting way to find his or her way through the fog.