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By Root 985 0

hoped. The day was cloudless, with only an occasional breeze. Wade’s high school is an old stone building with a clock tower in front. There was a large white tent in place before the front doors, seventy yellow-clothed tables topped with pink geraniums. There was nothing reminiscent of sadness. It was to be, and looked to be, a celebration. There were eight hundred people there, eating lunches made by a local caterer, the mother of one of Wade’s closest friends. Thomas was beyond eloquent, describing his sculpture as the image of a comet like the short life of a child, brightening our skies and then extinguishing. John spoke of the Learning Lab and how it would level the playing field for students of different means, as Wade had wanted, and of the generosity of everyone who had come. Governor Jim Hunt spoke and was quite good, as education is his chief interest and gentleness came naturally to him. And I spoke of Wade, and of Ben, and Jackson, and Betsy.

“When we sat after Wade’s death and wondered what he would have us do, we first wrote the things for which he stood. And then the things for which he cared. We recognized, as we wrote, how well Wade had followed the Apostle Paul’s last instructions to his young companion Timothy: to be an example in love and honor and charity.

“The notion of these projects is to do what Wade might have done had he been given a full lifetime. To inspire those people he might have inspired, to help those people to whom he might have given his hand, and to encourage those people who needed encouragement. Those here who knew Wade know that he would have inspired, and supported, and encouraged in his adult life, for he did those things in his young life. He knew that it was not always easy to do the right thing—but that in the end, the right thing served you best.

“We are blessed, John and I. It does not seem in our circumstances that we should be able to say that, but we do. We have been blessed by the presence among us of wonderful children. Some of them sit with us now, and we dearly love them, and some of them—wonderful children all—do not. Wade. Ben. Jackson. Betsy. This is not a moment to mourn their absence—although we each mourn, of course—it is a moment to celebrate their collective presence among us. They have not gone as long as we feel their presence in our lives, as long as we each listen for their voices within us, as long as we touch the things they touched, love the friends they loved, and, as we do here, do what they might have done.”

When I was through, Cate spoke, a single simple sentence, dedicating, on behalf of her brother, the bench and the Learning Lab. Sarah Bolton, a stunning friend of Wade’s with a voice even more lovely, came to the microphone for the closing. Without accompaniment, Sarah sang “Hymn of Promise” from the Methodist Hymnal, her clear young voice filling the tent and the front lawn. And while she did, Cate took her place behind her. Then other children rose from their seats and slowly worked their way to the stage, joining Cate, noiselessly forming a semicircle behind Sarah. Brad, who had been Wade’s friend so long he had his own toothbrush at our house. Cate’s best friend, Settle, who had been raised with Wade as the big brother in her life. The boys, Todd and Matt and Michael and John, Chas and Will, Tyler, Ryan, all of them. And the girls, Addie and Erin and Katherine, Maggie and Julia, all the others. Solemn friends, the young people whose handprints were in the wall of the comet. As the last verse rang across the long lawn—

In our end is our beginning; in our time, infinity;

In our doubt there is believing; in our life, eternity,

In our death, a resurrection; at the last, a victory,

Unrevealed until its season, something God alone can see

all seventy children—healthy and strong—stood together. And my father wept inconsolably. I had tried to prepare him for what would happen, but as he did not see these children often, their promising faces were too much for him.

After the grown-ups dispersed to the Lab and the wall and back to work,