[When Your Friend Dies]
I have a friend.. Let me start this over.
I had a friend named Ryan. Ryan McCormack was something else. I found out a few days ago that he took his own life. Myself and our whole friend circle has been devastated. What do you do when your friend dies? I think it is important to grieve, to remember and to eventually celebrate the life lived. Ryan was someone special.
But let me give you some background on our friendship. We met while studying abroad in New Zealand. We both were looking for adventure and within weeks we had bought a car together with one other friend and were exploring every mountain river and coastline. Our friend group would go on these epic hiking (In NZ they call it tramping) voyages. We grew so close together within that span of 6 months. Something special, perhaps even magical happened that sealed us together. A beautiful thing happens when you put that unique list of ingredients together. The equation looks something like this
Young people discovering who they are + Adventure + awesome soundtracks + New Zealand = instant lifelong friendships
Ryan was one of those guys who was totally and uniquely himself. With the combination of thoughtfulness, quirkiness, spontaneity and depth he was one of those friends that filled a category that only he created. There was no competition for that friend spot because Ryan was the only one who could fill it. And now that he is gone that spot will be strangely amiss. But it will live on in our memory.
So I’ve found myself in this strange place. This season of my life is one of the busiest I’ve been in in a long time and then to hear this news it totally took me by surprise. To be completely honest I’ve felt somewhat numb to the reality of it. Maybe part of it is that with so much going on it is hard to take the time to fully grieve or maybe it’s part of the grieving process, denial. But there are 3 things that I really wanted to say.
Grieving is something that is so important. It is something that our culture does not do well. You cannot selectively numb emotions, if you numb the pain of grieving then you will not be able to feel the fullness of joy. Grieving is beautiful and death is a part of life. There is no beginning without an end. We are only here for a short amount of time.
Mental Health issues do not receive the compassion or understanding that they deserve. You see someone with a cast on their arm or a boot on their foot and instantly you know that they have a broken bone and you offer to open the door for them. With mental health it is a lot more complicated than that yet the amount of compassion offered is significantly less. People often just say “get over it” or “Oh yeah I’ve been through that before, you’ll get through it”. But that doesn’t solve the problem. Fixing people never solves the problem. Sitting with people in there mess is a step in the right direction though.
There is always hope. God is real and He loves you and has a divine purpose for your life. He wants you to be fully alive and His perfect love was demonstrated by Jesus dying to save you from all the junk that separates us broken people from a perfect God. God is not about us being “religious" or following a set of traditions, He is about us being real and raw with Him. He wants relationship. And it’s crazy how God responds when you cry out and ask Him/Her/It (whatever you want to say, God goes beyond gender because God created gender - I use He because I see Him as a loving and protective Father) to reveal Himself to you. There is more to life than what you see. Also, angels are real too.
The end.
May Your love be strong,
Joey
p.s. Ryan is in the middle of the picture. We bought jeans at goodwill and turned them into jorts as we were planning to go to a roller derby and hoping to fit in. People are different in New Zealand.. and so were we.