Kevin

A Story by Nick Parrott

A very short narrative story about my experiences with my friend and mentor Kevin Holten Morse

I walked into the church with my head down and my hands in my pockets. I was shy when i was 9, i did not want to have to look anyone in the eyes because i felt like i did not belong. I was a Cub Scout and did not have any friends in the pack. My mom was no longer the den leader, i felt as though i was completely alone. There were scouts I had never met before added onto the scouts that i already did not like. Even the new den leader did not seem to like me very much and i was thinking about quitting until an older scout came down to be our den chief and his name was kevin.
Kevin was 14 and tall for his age, about 5’8’’, and he looked like he didn’t want to be there just as much as I didn’t. Which I soon found out to be true, he loved scouting and most things about it, however he was a boy scout and he was in a room with 10 cub scouts who seemed to want nothing else but to annoy him. In fact, I was the only cub scout he liked and i think it had something to do with the fact that I hated most kids there just as much as he did. He was the best den chief anyone could have asked for. He would spend a lot of the meeting making sure that everyone understood what he was teaching us and he would spend extra time with me, making sure that i knew more than everyone else so that I could “show them what a bad a*s scout i was”.
A couple years went by and it was time for me to leave the cubs and go into boy scouts. Not only that, but also I had earned the Arrow of Light, the best award you can get in cub scouts, with the help of Kevin. As I crossed the bridge from cub scouts and into Boy Scouts, I looked around and saw Kevin's eyes sparkle and he gave me a look that seemed to say "congradulations". I was going kevins troop, troop 261, and i was still shy. Kevin sat there with me and the couple scouts I was friends with at the time and taught us how to tie square knots, different types of hitches and nooses. He would teach us random german words that we did not know were swears but still used proudly. He made me feel as though I was not just another new scout but that I actually belonged there.
Even though I made friends in the troop pretty fast, Kevin remained mentor in the troop. He helped me get my first two ranks in Boy Scouts very fast. I felt as though I could accomplish anything. As I received my patch paraded around the church in my uniform I proudly stayed with the older scouts with whom I was now welcome.
Kevin was a marine nut. He never got to be the amazing soldier he would have been, but he always would where his camouflage jacket and his military backpack. He taught me way more first aid then I really needed to know but I loved it all anyways. I ended up being a master of CPR by the time that Kevin was assigned to teach it to the scouts my age so instead of being part of the class and acting like I was learning something, I got to teach it with Kevin. I stood there with him and I felt like some kind of omniscient being and almost looked down upon the younger scouts due to my false sense of superiority. After the class I walked away for everyone so that I could go home with my dad and play video games as soon as possible. If I had known that that was the last time I would ever see Kevin alive I would have said something to him. I don't know what I would have said, but I suppose anything is better than nothing.
I did not go to scouts for a few weeks because of my busy schedule but I did not thing much of it. There was a meeting every week, why would it matter if I missed one or two? On April 13th 2010, the morning started like anything else. My alarm went off and I smacked it quiet a couple times until my mom walked in. She did this every morning since I never seem to be able to get up by my self. She usually just opened my door and yelled at me to get up or she would rip my covers off to force me up, however today was very different. She turn off my alarm clock for me and sat down at the foot of my bed and gently shook me awake. Her blue eyes seemed lifeless, they lacked the usual happiness I had grown to know as my mother's. All that remained was remorse.
"Nick, are you awake?" She asked me. She seemed to almost be hoping that I would not respond so that she did not have to be the one to break the news to me.
"Yea, yea I'm getting up mom" I said sitting up and about to gt ready to get into the shower, but she stopped me and asked me to stay in my bed. I obeyed and remained seated as she began to prepare her self to release the words that must have felt like thousand pound weights on her tongue.
Finally she simply said "Honey, Kevin died". I laid there motionless. I didn't say anything, I couldn't. My head was still trying to comprehend this impossible thing that was just spoken. "What?" I asked. I couldn't say anything else, my brain was thinking millions of things a second but couldn't find away to put those thoughts into words. My question hung in the air like a ball in zero gravity, it was simply waiting for something, anything, to bring it back down. The seconds felt like years until my mother finally said "On Saturday, Kevin Morse was found dead in his room. He hung himself honey, I'm so so sorry".
Even with the most clear statement that could have been made, it doesn't make it anymore possible. He can't possibly be dead. They made a mistake. Maybe he just stopped his pulse, he knows how to do that. Anything, please don't let this happen, I thought to my self. All thes questions or alternate theories of what happened came to mind but all that came out were tears. Thousands of them. I couldn't stop them, I was sick to my stomache trying not to completely loose it, but I did. My heart dropped and shattered on the flore beside my bed.
My mom didn't make me go to school that day, instead I stayed home and laid in my bed trying to understand that fact that I would never see Kevin alive again. The thought circled my mind for hours. My dad stopped by later on in the day to take me out, to try and get my mind off things. It was nice of him to try but it didn't work. I mostly sat there staring off into nothing trying to comprehend everything I was feeling. My heart felt like someone left it under an anvil and my stomach felt like it had made its new home somewhere in my toes.
When I go home I continued crying but this time with my sister. She loved Kevin as much as I did and she was hurting to. I left though, I didn't want it be around her, I didn't want to be around anyone. What u wanted was to have Kevin back. I wanted his deep voice to tell me that our destination was only a mile away and for him to get lost and turn it into a twelve mile hike like he always did. However that moment would never happen again. No moment would ever be the same again.
The next few days passed by in a fog, I wasn't really anywhere. My friends looked at me with the most concerned faces and hugged me saying that everything was going to be okay, but it didn't help, infact it rememinded me about how sad I was most of the time. The only person who made an impression on me in those first few days was my science teacher. The fact that it was her surprised me more than anything. She was a short old lady, the oldest in the school, she seemed to have more wrinkles then cells in her body, and she wore a brown wig that was painfully obvious was not her real hair. One day, in her science class when we were all dong our work, I was struggling to not completely loose it and start drowning in tears. Apparently she noticed and she asked me to come out into the hall with her. I figured she was going to yell at me for something so I sighed relatively loudly and slowly dragged my feet along the floor over and out into the hall way. She looked at me with a happy look on her face which confused me. I haven't seen happiness in what seemed like for ever and I forgot what it looked like. "Our world is beautiful" she said "the world is full of wonderful things that make us feel so happy because they are so beautiful that they affect our lives in profound ways. The best thing about that is that atoms can not be destroyed. So your friend isn't gone, he has simply changed into something else. He might be the flower on your lawn or the leaf that falls on your head or even the air that we are breathing, but he is never gone. And remember as long as you live that he will never be truly gone". These words stuck to me and had the deepest impact on me. I hugged that wrinkly old lady and cried for at least ten minutes before returning to my day. I will never forget what she said to me on that day, and it still helps me through pain of loss to this day.
Soon it was time for Kevin's wake. I didn't think it was going to have that big of an impact on me for some reason. I thought that all the pain was done, if not plateauing. I was unbelieveanly wrong. I walked In and saw my Boy Scout troop all over the place. They were all sad to, just as much as me it seems. I waited in line to see him. I think that was the first moment I realized it was really him. It wasn't just a person that u was sad that died, it was my friend, my mentor, it was Kevin. I looked down on him, and it hit me, like a ton of bricks it hit me, and I couldn't do anything but cry. My friend Matt who was best friends with Kevin sat with me and let just cry for so long until his shirt looked like someone had dumped water on him. Every now and then I would look back at Kevin to remind myself that this was real. When I was finally pulling myself together I was skied to fill in for one of the guards and guard his casket. I couldn't say no, however it was so hard to say yes. I stood there looking off into nothing guarding Kevin. After all the years of him protecting me this was my first and last chance to protect him. Eventually I was released and went back to crying. At one point I saw his little brother spencer do I decided to go over and se how he was doing. He was sitting there watching the slide show of pictures of Kevin and he was crying as much as I had been. I put my hand on his shoulder and he looked up at me. Neither of us could form words to say but we knew what each other meant. We hugged and cried for a long time until my mother decided it was time to go. I took one last look at Kevin. My last look. "Good bye...forever"