Boston University School of Law

Exhibit A: Post office sales receipt.

My first year of law school ended at 11:51pm on May 19, 2010, my mom’s 59th birthday. It was at that moment that I handed $1.25 to a postal worker to forward my journal writing competition entry to the BU Law Review office as a fileable hard copy accompaniment to my electronic entry uploaded a half hour earlier. I had spent the day and the previous week preparing the entry, yet still I needed those last minutes before midnight when it was due. My good friend and mentor, Chuck, who married Yaminette and I in 2006, had called earlier in the evening to check in, mentioning his son, Andrew, as he regularly does in conversation because everyone who knows his family is on an emotional rollercoaster with them according to the developing details of Andrew’s more-than-two-year fight with stage-four colon cancer, diagnosed at age 35. We barely spoke, agreeing to check in the next day after my submission.

Chuck only half married us, actually. He was returning from an out-of-country vacation with his wife Marianne to meet us in VT for the ceremony, but having found out last minute that the marriage would not be valid without Chuck having a particular license for which we never applied, we turned to his son Andrew who was not on vacation and willing to sign papers with us. Pastor Andrew legally bound us in MA in front of an impromptu collection of church staff as witnesses the day before Pastor Chuck ceremonially bound us in VT in front of our families.

Andrew with the son he lent me for a diaper-changing duel with my brother-in-law.

But the title “Pastor” sounds impersonal. Later when I joined the church staff, I developed a grandiose youth ministry manifesto and Andrew helped me with recommendations for overlooked items such as “action points” and a “timeline.” At the baby shower for my little man Nahum, while he was still the size of a mango, Yaminette’s oldest sister was also pregnant with a mango-sized son and the husbands had to face each other in a diaper-changing duel. My brother-in-law was handed a one-year-old nephew, and Andrew lent me his one-year-old son, the youngest of three with his undergrad sweetheart Val. Andrew said the key is starting the diaper high enough on the baby’s back. I would have won with this advice except that I put on the diaper backwards and had to start over, which still resulted in a tie. Andrew was a good coach.

I emphasized to the postal worker that I needed a May 19 postmark date. She looked over to the other worker behind the counter and called, “We got another one,” apparently having served a steady current of BU Law students. The worker she called to was helping my law student friend, and moments behind us another law student friend ran in, chasing midnight.

Maybe I would have finished earlier if I had put in more time over the weekend, but I decided to travel with Yaminette and Nahum to CT to catch her family’s celebration of Yaminette’s oldest sister’s new Ph.D. in medical anthropology—the sister with the same-aged son whose fathers dueled. There was also the matter of the night of May 18 for which Yaminette had long ago gotten us tickets to see reggae legends Steel Pulse to celebrate the end of the school year and her new Master in social work, arranging babysitting through a barter with her practically-a-sister friend Naeema who is a year ahead of me at BU Law, involving all-you-can-do laundry at our place. Then again, I made up the hours of family time by working while my family slept and drinking stronger coffee, so I lost sleep moreso than time. I’m sure my eleventh hour law school friends also had their stories.

Andrew cheering on my son to find hidden Easter eggs in Chuck and Marianne's front yard.

The next morning—while choosing Nahum’s clothes for daycare, squeezing my wife’s shoulders and considering logistics of the day, giving the French press an extra minute to steep an extra scoop of coffee grinds, preparing lunches, recalling a foggy late-night post office run with my friend Garry who printed my paper after I ran out of ink and drove me in my car since he knew the shortcuts to downtown, recalling a conversation on hold with Chuck—Andrew died. He was on hospice care, the doctors gave their grim prognoses, he was gaunt, etc.—all the things that point to his death not being a surprise. But death seems to be always a surprise. I will miss him. I already miss the escaped chance to connect with Chuck on May 19, to be there for him. On May 20 we drove a tree to Chuck’s house to plant in his son’s honor. I looked him in the eyes and shook his hand before we hugged.