This tragedy in our WNY community hits close to home, a friend loses his life. Yet, it is one that is all too common on college campuses throughout the US. You can read between the lines. Alcohol was involved.
I knew this young man. His father coached my son in hockey for two years. My son played on the team with him, they shared the same position. He was over our house on more than one occasion.
Matt would take the time to chat with me while his buddies hung out in my son's man-cave basement. He was truly a great kid. A big, gentle loving bear of a boy.
Yet, he was like many typical teenage boys. He drank. He drank very heavily. He drank to excess. He drank 'til he vomited. He drank 'til he passed out.
The term moderation was NOT in his vocabulary. Was he unlike many of his friends? Only in that he possibly died from his excesses.
How does one teach moderation? How does one influence another to not go to such extremes? Can we? Do we, as parents, lay the law down and restrict and punish the excesses? Do we clamp down so hard that the kid rebels?
My good friend, whose family was like a second family to this young man, kept saying, "But he knew it was wrong." Wrong? Did he know? Did he realize the possible consequences? Did he?
These kinds of tragedies can make us look within. How did my behavior contribute to this? Do my actions speak for excess or moderation? Did I drink in moderation? Was my drinking merely a crutch?
As the saying goes, "We teach when we least expect."
These kinds of tragedies can make us look to place blame outside of ourselves. Why did someone let him drink that much? Who gave him the alcohol?
When I look back on my high school and college years and even the years after college I wonder sometimes how the heck did I make it through? What was it that kept me mostly out of harms way? Did I know moderation then? No, not really.
If indeed excessive alcohol lead to Matt's death, what did we miss? Was it just a fluke in his gene pool? Or was it something in our own behaviors that encouraged his excess. Did we model excess? Was Matt trying to tell us something in his behavior that we weren't picking up? Did he drink so heavily to avoid something?
These kinds of tragedies don't make sense in the scheme of things. A good kid is gone. A good kid who was headed toward good things has left us before he reached his full potential. A good kid who just didn't know that how he was living his life would one day take his life.
I don't know how to make sense of such events. I only know that my reaction to such things can either improve mine and others way of life or it can destroy our lives with sorrow, guilt and anger.
My prayers go out to Matt's family and his close friends. Right now, I pray for their comfort and peace. I pray that they may cry on the shoulders of all who both loved them and their son.
I pray that eventually they may use this tragedy to look within and maybe honor his life and death by asking themselves how might I become better by this.
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