Barrett Wyles Raymond 1981 - 2012
I hope it is true that a man can die and yet not only live in others but give them life, and not only life but that great consciousness of life.
- Kerouac
This is one
of the hardest things I've ever had to write. I’m not sure I
even know how to do it. So much to get out, but there will
never be enough space or words to communicate it all.
I’ve lost
one of my oldest and best friends in the world. His name is
Barrett Wyles Raymond and he was 31 years old. He went missing
doing what we did a million times as kids; canoeing on the Hudson
River.
I learned
that he was missing as I sat in an airport 8000 miles away. I came home as soon
as I could, it is the only place that felt right to be.
What makes
it harder is that his earthen vessel is still missing. We all just want
him, even if we can’t have him back.
Some of you
knew him as a student, a friend, a pirate, a pain in the ass, a nephew, a
cousin, a son and a brother. Some of you only know of him from
stories I told or are meeting him here for the first time. But how does
one sum up 18+ years of friendship and do it justice?
I am lucky that his travels brought him to New York a few weeks
before I left. It had been a few months, one of the shorter spans
we’d gone without seeing each other over the last few years, but I got to tell
him about my trip and see how excited he was for me.
As always,
it was as if I had seen him the day before. And, as always, we said
goodbye as if it may be the last time.
I would
always let out a sigh of relief when he would call to tell me he was home
safely. I know all of us did. Sometimes it took weeks,
others months. But he always called... usually making
some unidentifiable sound before breaking into the next chapter in his
outrageous story. It was never something that I took for granted,
because I knew this was the call that I could be getting.
Barrett's Pirate Ship - Bequia Schooner "At Last"
He was a
sailor, an artist, a friend, a charmer, a lover and a pirate. He was fearless, brave and a
rebel. He did things his way. He was the king of
spitballs and killing frogs, goats and pigs. He would break his hand
and then saw off the cast because it was annoying to hoist a sail with it on. He
was the only sea-faring person I’ve ever met who didn’t like
fish. He was puckish; the instigator, the difficult one. He was
often misunderstood for all these things, because he also had the biggest heart
and he was the best friend a guy could ask for and so much more. He was the
ringleader of our crew; a true pirate captain.
He was one
of the most intelligent and talented people I have ever met. While
the conventions of both never suited him, they bore great fruit. He
achieved more in 31 years than many do in a lifetime. An amazing
artist, he would turn his creative mind and talent into working with artists like
Kermit Love and James Childs. Eventually, his attentions turned to the sea,
as they always would. He willed himself to become a sailor and went
on to win world-class races and captain his own boat.
Every turn
was the opposite of what one would expect. Sometimes the route was
longer, and sometimes it annoyed people, but it almost
always made sense in the end.
There is no doubt there was magic in this boy. He is as much
responsible for who I am today as anyone. He taught me to be bold,
to be generous and to be free. His penchant for mischief, adventure
and his fearlessness made me a better, more interesting person than I am.
We became fast friends in the 7th grade Social Studies class of Mr. Vinck and
Mr. Latvis, where we’d get in trouble for talking
or, more often, for Barrett drawing something on my backpack or notebook with
me egging him on.
I can still
remember it like it was yesterday.
I can still
remember the day we skipped out of the first few periods of school to wander
through the woods to a friend’s place who was home sick, only to be too
chicken to actually go up to the house. It was one of the first of many adventures together. And I still remember a
teacher figuring out what we’d been up to and threatening to tell our mothers
if we ever did it again. That teacher probably should of; but the
message came across loud and clear. Well, for a little while at
least. But that was Barrett. Give him one half of one millimeter
and you were done for.
The
friendship continued over the next 18 or so years. And despite our
lives diverging on two different trajectories, we shared our heartbreaks and
triumphs; foolishness and sanity; amazing adventures and head-splitting
hangovers. (Of course, his were always worse. The kid just couldn’t
handle them.) It was made up of all the appropriate ingredients of a
great friendship, so many of each that I could write for weeks. But
I'm sure I'll keep telling them in the coming weeks,
months and years.
And while
I’ll have all of those memories forever; they are now my only ones and I won’t
have him. He was taken too soon and he simply cannot be
replaced.
I'm in
disbelief that this is real. None of it makes sense.
I’m sad my
future wife and kids will never get to meet him. Will never get to
let him regale them with his tales of the high sea.
I’m scared
when I think of his last hours and not being able to be there for my
friend.
I’m sad for
and with all of our friends and heartbroken with and for his family.
If there is
a single blessing, and that’s a tough word here, it is that he was taken by the
water. The thing that taught him so much and gave him life now holds
his spirit forever. While the circumstances are certainly
beyond what he, or anyone, would have wished for, it is where he would want to
be.
But if he
were here today, I’d tell him he picked a shitty time to be angel.
It is
legend that if a sailor drowns, the Swallows will carry their soul to
heaven. Barrett had a Swallow on his forearm; now we all have a piece of
him. And he will continue to shine on us all.
Barrett's Flock of Swallows
We love
you. I love you.
I’ll see you on the other side, Brother.
Sail on.
I am standing on the seashore, a ship sails in
the morning breeze and starts for the ocean. She is an object of beauty and I
stand watching her till at last she fades on the horizon and someone at my side
says: “She is gone.” Gone! Where? Gone from my sight—that is all. She is just
as large in the masts, hull and spars as she was when I saw her, and just as
able to bear her load of living freight to its destination. The diminished size
and total loss of sight is in me, not in her, and just at the moment when
someone at my side says, “She is gone” there are others who are watching her
coming, and other voices take up a glad shout: “There she comes!”
-
Bishop Brent
Tree
House - Fall 2011
Antigua
Classics Week with Nick - 2009
Sailing on Free Verse in Wickford, RI - Summer 2006
Barrett's
Room -- Somewhere around 1998
When
great trees fall, rocks on distant hills shudder, lions hunker down in tall
grasses, and even elephants lumber after safety.
When
great trees fall in forests, small things recoil into silence, their senses
eroded beyond fear.
When
great souls die, the air around us becomes light, rare, sterile.
We
breathe, briefly.
Our
eyes, briefly, see with a hurtful clarity.
Our
memory, suddenly sharpened, examines, gnaws on kind words unsaid, promised
walks never taken.
Great
souls die and our reality, bound to them, takes leave of us.
Our
souls, dependent upon their nurture, now shrink, wizened.
Our
minds, formed and informed by their radiance, fall away.
We
are not so much maddened as reduced to the unutterable ignorance of dark, cold
caves.
And
when great souls die, after a period peace blooms, slowly and always
irregularly.
Spaces
fill with a kind of soothing electric vibration.
Our
senses, restored, never to be the same, whisper to us.
They
existed. They existed. We can be. Be and be better. For they existed.”
- Angelou
