Finny, as I stand over your grave, an overwhelming sense of emptiness comes over me. I have so much I want to say to you. As I think about you, three distinct memories of you stand out in my mind: when you broke the swimming record, the moment when I jounced the limb, and our last conversation in the Infirmary room. I truly was shocked, Phineas. It was the first time I realized that you simply didn’t just perform these daredevil antics to show off; you went through the motions to prove yourself. I remember your indignantance to the fact that “A. Hopkins Parker” had his name on that plague for a solid two years, and no man nor swimmer had dared defy the odds and beat it. I remember how pristine the aquamarine pool was, how casually you perched …show more content…
That’s why I have to do it for you.” Those words circled in my head, Finny, after that second tense, strained conversation we had before going to that life-changing meeting of the Super Suicide Society of the Summer Session. I thought of it differently then. It’s certainly not the way I know you meant it now. I plotted this battle, this war between us up in my head, but I thought that you were out to get me. I untruly pieced together that you were trying to beat me, to be the better man in the end of our final year. I didn't think. It’s not your nature in the least bit, Phineas. All you wanted to do was jump together, to mark a symbol of our friendship, to mark us completing our Devon studies together. It was a peace treaty, an innocent suggestion; not meant to offend me or challenge me in any way, but I was filled to the brim with rage and conspiracies. I wanted to believe it was a blind impulse. I truly did Finny, and in some ways, it was. In some ways, it wasn't. It’s an ever-changing thought in my head to this very day. You knew I had done it from the second you felt the shift in the branch, and you turned to look at me with interest, a little bit of confusion, as your body turned and you fell. I can never think of those few seconds in regular time-only in slow motion. In my head I had won the war, following that instant. I dove into the water without fear. I’m ashamed to say that I felt proud, even accomplished. It’s now I realize: it was …show more content…
It’s stone gray with big, elaborate typescript-not like you at all. Don’t you think I wish I could sob, or well up in waves of anger, or fall into a pit of depression? I want to be able to talk about you, I want to scream it to the world: all the memories I have of you, all the things I thought but was never able to say. I want to be back in our early years at Devon, back when I could be carefree during the summer, and when I could break the rules when I wanted to. I wish I could spontaneously go against the current-like I did with you-but that side of me is gone, buried several feet into the ground and covered in frost and surrounded by giant looming skyscrapers in the middle of Boston. It’s all burrowed deep inside me, and the words can’t fall onto the tip of my tongue, because when you lose a part of you you simply can’t explain it. All of that is burrowed deeper than I can reach to pull it out. Beyond that locked gate of my feelings lies a long stretch of emptiness, like a barren desert. It’s too soon to reach that inside me now, but I know this lies true: I miss you Finny, old pal. You were my brother, my friend. And even though I lost a part of me, this part of you is still here; this broken heart is a little damaged (like that leg of yours,) but it still works. I just hope that one day, I can tell the story of Phineas and Gene, and their years at Devon-especially that one