In Memoriam...

By A.E. Bayne

Tuesday night, I attended the viewing for one of my former Drew Middle School students, Aaron Shacklette. I heard about Aaron’s car accident over the weekend from a Drew colleague, and I immediately remembered him as one of the brightest students I have ever taught and a true young man of character. Former teachers and coaches were quoted in the paper testifying to Aaron’s natural leadership abilities, his affability, and his popularity among his peers, a point proven by the line snaking out the doors of Covenant Funeral Home in Stafford. The parlor was opened wide, with a viewing and congregating area stretching across three rooms; and it was packed with his friends from Stafford and Randolph College, where he attended this past year. Aaron was involved in such a variety of activities while in high school and college that at least five groups had arranged stations to highlight their memories with him. While standing in line, I found myself thinking about the Aaron I knew, the 8th grader Aaron, with his goofy smile and poetic sensibilities, and his talent as a visual artist, a truly gifted young man.



Inevitably, my thoughts turned toward the senselessness of a death such as Aaron’s, and the brevity and unexpected nature of time. I do not believe that death has to have a reason, so I don’t tend to ask why someone has to die. As my father said when he was facing his own death, “Why not me?” However, when a person is as young and filled with promise as Aaron was, it makes you grasp for something that you can take from the event that will honor his life. As I waited to pay my respects to his family, I took notice of the effect that Aaron’s death had on his young friends, and I remembered an eerily similar experience from my youth.

I grew up with a girl named Chrissy Cutonilli, and we were quite close when we were young. Chrissy and I shared many important milestones, being that we ran with the same group of friends throughout elementary and middle school, and because we enjoyed many of the same things when we were younger. We went our separate ways during high school, and I recognize now that it had a lot to do with where I was at the time more so than the path that Chrissy took, though I wouldn’t have admitted it then.

Like Aaron, Chrissy was a person of great character and faith, with a large group of friends and an amiable personality. She had a natural aptitude for scholastics, carrying above a 4.0 throughout high school, and she worked with great fervor and diligence on anything with which she was involved. Teachers loved her; parents loved her; and most of the student body knew her, respected her, and called her a friend – she was just that type of girl.



I didn’t know this at the time, but Chrissy was diagnosed with a tumor on her spine when she was in 9th grade. She and her family kept it quiet, and her doctors removed it without incident. Tragically, a small amount of the tumor remained undetected. When Chrissy was a freshman at UVA in 1992, still carrying a 4.0 in her classes and participating in a sorority on campus, she became sick with bronchitis that she couldn’t seem to shake. The campus clinic finally decided to do a chest x-ray and found tumors on her lungs. Further investigation showed another tumor on her brain stem, and she died later that year. She was not yet 20 years old.

At the age of 19, I did not face Chrissy’s death well, and by that I mean that I didn’t face it at all. Our families had known each other from the time we were in second grade, yet I chose to relinquish those memories in lieu of a lie that would make her death easier to deal with. I refused to approach the casket at the viewing. I convinced myself that she and I had nothing in common, that there was no practical reason for me to attend the viewing and funeral, and that it was pointless. At the funeral, rather than sitting near my former classmates, I sat toward the darkened back of the church and dug my fingernails into my arms until they broke the skin rather than cry in front of everyone (and I did need to cry, badly). I barely spoke to the people I had grown up with at the Cuttonillis' house after the funeral; I was so damned angry. When I left their house, I didn’t want to ever think about Chrissy again, because hey, we weren’t really great friends toward the end of her life, and who needed to remember some dumb girl who up and died anyway.

Well, you know how it goes: never say never. I have never forgotten Chrissy, even in those early years after her death. She’d pop into my mind at the strangest times, what I called my, “What would Chrissy do or say” moments. I remember her warmth and her charitable nature when I find myself thinking that I don’t have any more to give. I think about her off-the-charts intelligence when I’m problem solving or organizing. I think about what a fantastic friend she was to me when we were young, and how much she meant to our circle of friends in those early years when we were searching out who we were going to become. Today, I feel fortunate to be able to say, “I once had a friend named Chrissy…,” and to be able to tell other people about what a phenomenal person she was. Despite trying very hard to forget her, she’s stuck tight to my moral compass.

Chrissy was there with me on Tuesday night, just as Aaron will be there for each of the people he influenced in his short nineteen years. I imagine his friends and family calling upon his name in times of trouble or doubt, remembering what a solid person he was. Maybe they will attempt to become just a little bit better because they knew someone who lived his life trying to do the right thing and behaving with compassion and love in his heart. Chrissy and Aaron were not perfect, but they chose to act, be involved, and bring happiness into other peoples’ lives, which makes them worth even the smallest memory in my book.

As we were leaving the viewing, I ran into another former student from Aaron’s class. Unlike Aaron, she was one who had always been a bit of a spitfire in class, one who was not above gossiping and making crass comments about her classmates. You know, a person just like the rest of us. I asked her how she was handling the viewing and we talked about Aaron for a bit. Then I asked her what she was doing with her life. She is studying occupational therapy at VCU. Yeah, the kids are all right.