My best friend in first and second grade has died. The obituary in my hometown paper — the esteemed Buffalo News — only says that Justin Reyes had “died unexpectedly” two-months-plus back. My parents informed me of the news — asking me if I knew the person — over a phone call two days ago. I told them, “Yes, in fact, he was my best friend in second grade.” Most likely, my friend committed suicide.

The paper mentions that Justin had “served in the U.S. Army for eight years, initially stationed along the DMZ in South Korea, and then deployed to Iraq during Operation Iraqi Freedom.” It adds that Justin “was the recipient of many commendation medals and awards for meritorious service as a Team Leader and Squad Leader for Charlie Company.” And, that Justin “sustained multiple combat related injuries and, as a result, retired in May 2007.”

Our friendship faded after second grade, not because of choice, but more so because at that age, friendship and even best-friendship was governed by your homeroom classmates (and neighborhood proximity). And as the years went by, and as our homerooms and neighborhoods remained distant, our childhood best-friendship became a friendship, and then just an acquaintanceship with a history. I remember randomly meeting Justin senior year in high school, and smoking some marijuana, laughing (of course) about how we used to play in the field and classroom of our elementary school, and now — well, all things come full circle. We graduated from high school together; I never saw or heard from him again.

Awhile back, I happened upon Justin’s MySpace profile (alright, I was MySpace lurking). I wanted to say “hello,” but thought that would be weird, so I didn’t, and now I wish I did. If I could go back in time, I would want to write this to him — in an email or a post on his wall or comment board — “Hey Justin, it’s me Jeff. How are you doing? I see that you fought in Iraq, I am glad that you are alright, safe at home. Although I am not an outward supporter of the war, I do most certainly support the troops, especially you. I love you to death.”

A photo on his MySpace profile shows my old buddy (on the right) in Ramadi:

But I remember him from my (must-have-been) first-grade birthday party at the local roller skating rink, the best of the best places to have a party (that’s Justin, front and center, and my silly older brother to the left):

In second grade, Justin and I spent one week (when you’re young, a week is like a semester, and a summer is like a decade) shaving the colored coating off of all our pencils — yellow, red, blue, green — with our scissors (child-safety scissors, I am sure), resulting in pencils that were the color of the underlying wood. Our classmates all wanted them, and some even said they would pay for them (with what money, let’s just not think about that). Justin and I thought about starting a business with the apparent prospects of this bold venture. The student teacher even said he would like to use the shavings for his art projects (although he was most likely humoring us, as all second-grade student teachers tend to do). But there we had it, we were a zero-waste company in the making, based out of our desks in second-grade homeroom. (Of course, as fate would have it, “natural pencils” became all the rage, and the big guys would have pushed us out of the market anyway.)

In pace requiescat.

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