EMPTY SEATS SOMETIMES TELL STORIES

A TRAGIC EVENT; FAMILIES DEVASTATED

It was a Saturday evening in late July when the text message came through; 3 young men, all graduates of the class of 2025 at a local small-town high school, killed in a one vehicle rollover accident on a county road, while a 4^th fought for his life at the local hospital.  I received the message because I was on the basketball coaching staff at the local high school and many of the upperclassmen within our program were classmates, teammates, and friends, to the young men. 

As the information came in, what I learned was that these young men were on their way to a Saturday night concert at Cheyenne Frontier Days in Cheyenne, WY at the very venue I was at the previous evening.  Five young men, looking forward to a fun-filled evening, only a mile or two from one of the family homes, never made it off the dirt county roads onto the paved highway leading north toward Cheyenne. 

As I processed the information coming through, I felt a small connection simply by the fact these young men were heading to a concert at the same venue I had been to the night before. 

…And that’s when the image came into my mind…quickly… vividly… 5 empty seats.

I began to picture where I was sitting that Friday evening at the concert; I thought about the 5 seats that remained empty through that Saturday evening concert… no one sitting around those empty seats would know there was a story behind why they remained empty, perhaps no one even thought twice about it… but those empty seats told a story… a very tragic one.

TRAGEDY HAS MANY FACES

The following day, that Sunday afternoon, the school administrators made the decision to open the high school and provide a place for crisis counselors to support the community as needed, but also to provide a safe place for the kids to gather with friends and find some sense of connection and support from one another. 

At one point a younger coach asked me about my experience with circumstances like this in my career.  I remember that I responded, “No, but tragedy has many faces.”  He agreed and that conversation ended as quickly as it started.  However, the conversation in my head was only getting started.

I stood there in a room full of students, parents, crisis counselors, teachers and school administrators, watching the kids, absorbing the different responses I was seeing.  I witnessed the disbelief, the shock, the questions, the sadness, the numbness… and within my own thoughts, I drifted back into experiences I had in my former life as a probation officer. 

It was 2011 when I attended the funeral of a young gal named Taylor who I first got to know on juvenile probation and then again as a young adult.  She had been a barrel racer, competing in rodeos in the region, and according to her mom, had been quite successful. But drug addiction that began as good-ole high school partying had stolen her desire to do something she was special at. Addiction has that way of displacing everything important to a person and becoming THE thing a person’s life revolves around.

I remember that with her mother’s support I made it a condition of Taylor’s probation to participate in at least one barrel race event before her probation could end, and then when she did, my wife and I were there to watch her come in 2^nd place.  After the event, I approached her before we left the arena… she seemed so alive; she was doing something she had loved.  Sober-Taylor was a wonderful young lady with so much out ahead of her… but she never made it after what was deemed an accidental overdose. 

There was a saddle that would forever remain empty… never to be ridden in again by this young lady.

Then, I thought about Jesse…

It was about 2013 I believe.  Jesse was another person I supervised on probation as a juvenile, and once again… it was drugs that brought him back into my life as a young adult.  I will remember the last time I saw him alive; he was in a conference room at my office with other probation clients, and he stood by a whiteboard talking about whatever lesson we were running a group on, engaging other clients on the topics discussed.  He was a charismatic person; a leader waiting to happen.   He was also pursuing his college education by taking classes at the local community college before transferring to Colorado State University… but that story was never written.  Jesse overdosed in the bathroom of his parent’s home. 

Classroom seats once filled by a young man with so much promise became empty.

TRAGEDY HITS THE LIVING

Like I said above, tragedy has many faces, and tragedy doesn’t only involve the dead… it includes the living.   

I think of Michael…

Michael was likely a junior in high school when I was a senior.  Had we grown up in the same town, we could have passed in the same hallways, been in some of the same classes… hung out at the local McDonald’s at the same time (McDonalds used to be cool in the 70’s)… maybe even known some of the same friends.

But Michael’s life took a very different direction than mine after high school.  He was convicted of a crime, spent years in prison, and now, in his mid-60’s, he’s homeless.

He’s a victim for sure, but he’s a victim of experiences we know nothing about, and what he’s done with all those experiences over a lifetime has been to create his own layers upon layers of bad decisions.

It’s okay to feel conflicted here. There’s a place for compassion and frustration/anger. We’re all a product of our own lived experiences (beyond our control), coupled with our responses (within our control). Michael (and so many others who become wrapped up in the justice system) have a large responsibility to carry for where their life goes… but here’s the point in this story: they’ve failed to occupy seats because of their choices.

Seats at family gatherings, seats in work places, seats at coffee shops with friends, etc… they’ve all been empty because Michael and those in his circumstances have failed to occupy them.

It’s a tragedy that continues to be lived out every day. We simply have no idea what seats have remained empty because people like Michael never became the person they were meant to become. 

I can’t get bogged down in this post with convincing a reader that a person with a story similar to Michael’s is a tragedy. But I’ll say this and move on: do you believe 5^th grade Michael dreamt of becoming the man he is today? Do you believe that when his 5th grade teacher asked everyone what they wanted to be when they grew up, Michael responded with the following?

“Michael, what do you want to be?”

“I want to grow up, cause a lot of damage in people’s lives and spend years incarcerated. Then when I get out, while struggling to obtain meaningful employment and find housing, I want to continue making additional bad decisions and become so overwhelmed with where to begin in rebuilding my life that I do nothing more than try to survive each day! That’s my dream teacher!”

Regardless of whether we can agree on feeling some sense of compassion for the marginalized population within our community, their decisions over a lifetime have resulted in empty seats not being filled because they failed to step into the roles in life that they were created to fill… father, mother, sister, brother, coworker, friend, etc.

Tragedy.

BUT THIS POST HAS ANOTHER LAYER

What seats have remained empty based on your own decisions? Where have you failed to step up and step in to life experiences that allow your gifts to be enjoyed by those around you?

Not throwing stones, but as my wife shared with me several days ago, if our life vision doesn’t scare us, we’re selling ourselves short.

To the artist unwilling to pick up the paintbrush… the musician who’s put away their instrument.., the entrepreneur unwilling to take that risk and schedule a meeting with the small business lender… to the writer unwilling to commit to wrestle with the words (that one stung…) it kind of gets summed up like this: it’s a life not lived… and that also is a tragedy.

Our fear for taking a risk and putting ourselves out there, our fear of stepping out of the prison of comfort or complacency we’ve created, it’s the life we yearn for, but will never live… and we quietly live out that tragedy while seats remain unoccupied.

Those empty seats all tell stories as well.

This is a very inadequate effort to express a small portion of the things that weigh heavily on my heart. I see the tragedy being played out every week when I go into the jail to meet with people.

I cannot help but think about the tragedy of empty seats when I sit at a light and watch a homeless person walking along with a shopping cart filled with their life possessions.

This concept is simply too big… too tragic, to be adequately addressed in a blog post.

But what will each of us be willing to do in order to begin occupying those seats we were meant to sit down in?