Rec Park

I did not know Tyler. He cut a distinctive figure, with a mop of curly brown hair and an angular face, an easy smile most photographic subjects lack.

He was Amber's coworker, though a subordinate. Amber faintly jokes that, before Tyler, the last person to work in the back with them quit shortly after.

Tyler killed himself. It is the first line of this obituary, so it is not a closely kept secret. What few details I have are not worth recording except that he was found in the Red Hook Recreation Park--where I once had an anniversary party, through which I bike. I wonder where in the park, exactly. The playground? The pavilion? The basketball courts? The kiosk where they serve the parents hot dogs as they watch Little League games? But it doesn't matter. I hope the police, not a child, found his body. Hunting is far from rare in Red Hook, but a gunshot so close to homes would arouse suspicion.

The rest of my speculation is morbidity, wanting the most complete story I do not in any way deserve.

An hour before Tyler's memorial service, Amber wonders whether I would go. I am almost offended they would think otherwise. I have nothing more important to do this Sunday than support my spouse in their socially mandated grief.

The obituary said to dress casually since the deceased would have wanted this. Tyler's family did, but many are in their funereal finest. One boy is in a powder blue tuxedo and top hat that seems a shade whimsical for the occasion until I see a photo of Tyler wearing it. In the picture, this boy wears a matching citrus orange suit from when they went to the prom.

I am not sure I had ever shared space with Tyler. There was a picnic for the hospital a few years ago, but that might have been before his tenure. In October, the hospital (and the staff's partners) went to see Little Shop of Horrors in the city, but Amber doesn't recall if Tyler came. We would not have looked for him. He would have fallen into that chasm between "a small child to whom I pay attention" and "an adult who might converse with me."

One expects a predictable litany of the deceased's virtues and memories that changed the bereaved. With Tyler, these seem more sincere and consistent. He was compassionate to everyone he met if one puts any weight in the testimony of the dozen gender-expansive boys who stand at the podium to share clauses between sobs. He loved animals, his cats Katie and Oliver especially. His first love was a teddy bear hamster named Cornelius, whom Tyler spoiled with a series of cages connected by tubes.

When I die, I cannot imagine I will receive half this send-off. I suspect I won't warrant it.

The day he killed himself seemed usual. No one could have suspected. He went to the gym, something I might skip if I didn't expect to be using my body the next day. He was bright and funny. He told people he would see them tomorrow. Then he shot himself.

He had depression and anxiety, as does his mother, Kelly, a middle school math teacher. There was darkness in him he could not quench, but he was more concerned with spreading his light to others so they would hurt less.

Kelly says that Tyler is at peace, liberated finally from the pain of his mental illnesses. The world is left less for that, and I cannot speak to the balm of the afterlife. Amber recalls Tyler being too self-deprecating, calling himself stupid for making a common and easily fixed mistake. He was the only person for whom he had a cross word.

I weep with the mourners, dampened little by Tyler having been a stranger. He was a six foot four, athletic, driven twenty-two-year-old adored by all these young men. Mental illness got him, but he was glorious. I work with juvenile murderers who will never second guess themselves, but Tyler terminally did. His chemicals were wrong, and therapy didn't set them right. I prefer to think that he might have evened out in a few more years, but we cannot know.

When he was younger, Tyler told his father, Jim, that other boys made fun of his lankiness. Jim took him to the gym once, and Tyler was hooked, chiseling his body. In Tyler's shoes, I would have shrugged off the insults. This was not his way. Something upset him, and he devoted himself to fixing it. His brother Tucker mentions having gone to the gym a few times with Tyler, but with nothing like constancy. The gym was a place to be with Tyler, whom he relentlessly admired, but not an end in itself.

Tyler wanted to work with animals and become a veterinarian--a profession not coincidentally known for suicidality. He may not have made it long, even if he overcame this doldrum. The solicitude that draws people to the field turns toxic into the hundredth euthanasia. Tyler already absorbed the pain of those around him, an empathic pain sponge.

There is nothing like justice in death. We all die but do not get the longevity our kindness should grant. I cannot avoid noting that Henry Kissinger just died at a hundred, surrounded by his family, his inarguable connection to multiple genocides not affecting him. In Tyler's final hour (or maybe only minutes), this bright boy who--if one believes the outpouring was nothing but warmth and love--was utterly alone.

He would have graduated from Bard College in May with a degree in biology. He was on the cusp of another step in a life that ought to have been charmed, but that might have been one of the things that pushed his hand. Perhaps Bard cosseted him enough that he could avoid the worst depressive claws, and he saw this respite would end. Did he wonder what his next adventure might have been, or did he see an unknown vista before him? According to Leo Botstein, the president of Bard College, Tyler lived at home and was "cared for by his loving parents," though most people are.

Tyler's father is the social media manager for the Center for Civic Engagement at Bard. Tucker is a student there. Soon, Tyler would lose his direct bond to a school that had played an outsized role in his life.

It is a cliche that one cannot know who is suicidal. They look and act in no specific way. There are no pictures at the service displaying Tyler's dark moments. It grates to impose even a frown on his handsome, grinning face. As far as one could tell in pictures and testimony, he was not all gloom and black clothes. He carried his pain inside enough that it shocked his friend Tyler was anything but sunshine and rainbows. He once stepped out of class to spend two hours counseling a friend who had all but left him behind years before. That was who Tyler was.

I don't even know his voice. I could not promise I would remember Amber mentioning him or that they would have had any reason to do so. I would understand this as a tragedy, worse than the commonplace death of someone my age, without this personal relevance. Even with the minor reflection off Amber, his loss is aching.

The room fills beyond capacity, something everyone who comes up to speak notes. The outpouring surprises even his family, though it should not. Tyler seemed like a golden child.

We pile onto the porch, where a bagpiper plays Amazing Grace at length--something that makes no sense to me. Why this instrument? Why this song? It is dissonant with the hours of sympathy we have shared.

It is minutes before everyone has exited, filling the porch past capacity, spilling down the stairs, and then occupying the path to reach the street--the latter groups under umbrellas beneath the spitting sky. Is this part of the service to get the mourners to leave the funeral home so we do not mill about sharing devastated hugs? Tyler died, but so have many, and the room needs to be cleaned before the next booking.

Amber and I go to the gathering at the firehouse after, hoping their coworkers will show up. They do not, so we eat mini sandwiches and cookies, having no secrets or stories to share about the boy. We watch the glittering twenty-somethings embrace and exchange laughs that ring hollowly, picking over a thousand photographs of him scattered on a table.

last watched: Fargo
reading: Why Buffy Matters