Head Tale

Shane Reiger (Picture posted on FB by his sister)

Overall, death tends to be pretty linear.

The oldest people you know usually die first – I suspect grandparents are often the first human deaths most people experience.  Or possibly people of the same generation – great aunts and uncles.  Elderly neighbours.

Then, as you get older, the age of those dying, tends to get closer to your own age.  Your friends’ parents.  Aunts.  Uncles.  Teachers.  Maybe older co-workers from early jobs. And unfortunately, your own parents too.

There will always be tragic exceptions to death only taking people as they get older.

Shea lost a classmate in elementary school who died in a motorcycle accident (and yes, in Saskatchewan “elementary school” and “motorcycle” are not uncommon to hear in the same sentence!).  Probably the first person I remember dying was a kid who was few years younger than me who died of cancer soon after high school. Another guy from the next town down the road who I used to party with regularly was killed crossing a highway when he was in his 30s.  A former coworker in her 40s who has been living with stage four breast cancer for years recently announced the cancer has spread to her lungs and the docs now give her only months to live.

And there are also the close calls, *so many* close calls when you grow up male and stupid in a small town.

The drunk friend who drives away from a party and turns down the highway, only surviving a head-on with a semi since the driver saw him swerving and slowed down.  Two friends in a five ton work truck who get hit by a train and are in induced comas for weeks before recovering though never to be the same.  Farm accidents.  Rollovers.  Rookie drivers making bad decisions.  Even hockey and football injuries that could’ve been that one in a million chance that it’s not just a stinger but results in something much worse – paralysis or even death.

There were 44 people in my graduating class in high school.

But through a strange twist of fate or luck, we never lost a single person in the thirty years since we graduated (literally, our grad was in May 1991).  There was one classmate who was with us right to grade eleven but then either dropped out or moved (can’t remember which) who died of a heart attack a few years ago and that felt like the first of our grade to die in some ways.

But if you think of your grade as the people in your grad photo, our first classmate to die passed earlier this week after a few months of living with cancer.

Shane-o wasn’t in my immediate circle of 5-6 best friends I hung out with the most.  But in a small town, by necessity, we all knew each other and had to get along (mostly!) as we shared small classes and played on the same sports teams and went to the same parties.

And though I never considered him as a “best friend”, we were close enough that I have some fond memories of him.

Here are a few off the top of my head…

* One of his birthdays in elementary school was the first time I ever had someone put coins in the cake (why didn’t my mom do that?!?)

* I don’t remember if he did it ever winter but I do remember Shane’s dad flooding a rink beside their house at least once and how much I enjoyed playing hockey with Shane and other friends.

* Shane was ahead of me in a few important ways.  I remember him being a huge fan of classic country music – Johnny Cash and George Jones and the like – and me thinking it wasn’t very cool compared to hair metal bands like Motley Crue and Poison.  Now what type of music to I constantly listen to?  More Waylon Jennings than Warrant, that’s for sure! 🙂

* Funny memory but Shane and I were both wrestling fans so in, I think grade four (?) before the teacher arrived each day, one classmate would stand by the door watching for a teacher while Shane, myself and maybe 1-2 other fans of rassin’  would have “matches” in front of the class.

* I wasn’t sure if wrestling was real or not when I was young so I still remember Shane explaining it to me: “It’s easy – WWF is fake but Stampede wrestling is real.”  Got it! 😉

* One wild memory is that Shane got into trouble with a teacher, maybe also in grade four, and instead of doing what he was asked (stand in the corner or whatever), he stormed out and slammed the door.  The teacher followed and slammed the door.  We hear a door down the hallway (likely the library as it has a front and back entrance.). I know this because we hear slam.  Slam again.  We can only hear it but I think we can all visualize Shane racing ahead of the teacher, darting in and out of rooms.  No idea how that ended – probably a lengthy detention and, in those days, probably a strap but it did show Shane had a stubborn (brave?) side.

* I still remember a recess in elementary school where all the guys wanted to play soccer but one huge Rider fan wanted to play football.  To get his way, the football fan said “Fine, I’ll take on all of you” basically saying he’d go 1 on 6 or whatever in a game of what would be less like football and more like murder ball (which the six of us were just fine with!). Well, five of the six anyhow because, we were about to start and to this day, I still remember that it was Shane who stepped forward and said “Okay, fine – I’ll go on your team”.   After he said that, the bloodlust went out of the rest of us and we split up into even teams.  It was such a small moment at the time but I honestly still think about it to this day – what an amazing lesson about treating people fairly and standing up for people who are outnumbered and speaking up when things aren’t right.

I’m sure other memories will come to me as I talk to my classmates and we reminisce about Shane-o, the “first of the gang to die”.  (I don’t think Shaneo- was ever a member of an LA Gang but this Morrissey song keeps running through my head anyhow.).