When you get a text message and the sender tells you to call them as soon as possible, and then when you text back, and they don’t reply, you know something is wrong.
This is what happened to me three years ago. I received a text message and a phone call that I never expected to receive – a text message and phone call that I never wanted to receive.
The text message was from my former college newspaper editor. The phone call was from my newspaper advisor. They both had to tell me the same thing – one of my best friends, David Scott Berry, had been killed in a car wreck.
I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t know how to react. I couldn’t sit down and cry. I couldn’t run off and hug his parents and be at his funeral. When I received the phone call, and then later returned it, I was walking through the Atlanta Airport with my family, getting ready to board another plane that would take us to Fort Lauderdale, where we would eventually board a cruise ship for the next five days. I was on my way to paradise.
But reality had just hit me hard and fast before I could leave. Reality is a bitch like that.
I managed not to think about Scott for the next few days because I know he would have wanted me to enjoy myself in the exotic locations where we traveled. When I came back, I started to deal with the fact that this name in my cell phone was now just a name, and I would never hear the voice again at the other end of the line.
I hated that I couldn’t go to his funeral. I never got to hug his mom and tell her she raised an amazing son. I was never able to meet his sister who he spoke about fondly. I didn’t get to properly say good bye.
I tried, though. I wrote his mother a letter when I came back, telling her some of my favorite memories of Scott. I don’t know if she ever got the letter, but it helped me in writing it.
Then, a week or so later, I was driving home late one night, listening to the Rent soundtrack, and I just started crying. One night that I was at Scott’s, he cooked me dinner while this soundtrack played in the background. It was such a fun night. He was trying to impress me with his cooking skills. I was just enjoying his company. I still make green beans sometimes like he made that night.
The rest of that summer, I was alright for the most part, but the worst was yet to come.
When I returned to school that year, that’s when I finally started to realize that he would never again walk into the newspaper office.
I had earned the position as editor after my many years of working on The Arka Tech. Scott was the editor for most of the time that I worked on the paper. We used to joke about how when I was editor, he was going to come in and help me with pages; he was our clutch. But that night, the first night I had to lay out pages, I began to comprehend that he wasn’t going to walk through the doors of the StuPub, pull up a rolling chair, and ask me what he could do to help. He wasn’t going to come in and joke about Tommy and Dr. Norton, or Ryan; he was really gone. And it was horrible. We ran a story in our first paper that year about Scott’s death and I couldn’t even write the headline for it. I wrote in the headline box, “I can’t write this,” and just left for the night with tears running down my face. That was never my office. That was Scott’s office.
It was in that office that I first met Scott Berry. It was in that office that we first became friends. It was in that same office where we ate Pizza Pro Pizza on late nights, and where we hung out with Bailey. He taught me page lay-out in that office. It was in that office that we met before heading out on our first date. It was outside that office that nearly a month later, I told Scott that I just wanted to be friends. And I crushed him.
But eventually, Scott and I would return to being friends; but only before I would move to Houston, Texas for the summer. It was that summer when we lost our friendship. I knew it was going to happen. He told me before I left, “Right when things are getting good, you are going to leave.”
Part of me thinks he felt that I left him and would never return. Part of me wonders if he was jealous that I had gone to Houston and he spent the summer in Russellville. I’ll never know. All I remember of that summer is that we didn’t talk a lot, and I hated it.
Once I returned, things were never the same with Scott. But I don’t think about that. I think about the good times, like going to Altus for dinner at this little pub in downtown. Or coming home for Easter to find tulips at my house that he had sent me. And there was the time we got tired of talking on the phone, so we went Lock and Dam to drink wine from plastic cups and smoke cigars. I still remember walking into the Hampton Inn to tell Tommy we wanted a room for the night (and Scott couldn’t keep a straight face.) I still think about that when I drive by that Hampton in Russellville. Those times, when it was just me, him, and the River Valley night sky – those moment are what I’ll always remember about him.
And now, three years later, memories are all I have left of Scott. He was one of my first friends in college. He was one of the first people -- who wasn't a teacher -- to tell me that I had some talent in this newspaper thing. He also showed me a little favoritism since he was a graduate assistant in one of my classes I took. He believed in me. I just wish he could have believed in himself some more.
David Scott Berry was a wonderful man – one I’ll never forget. If everything happens for a reason, then I think the sudden loss of Scott was to teach us to cherish our friends. While our family are to be loved and adored, great friends are to be held tightly as well. Great friends cannot be replaced. I always thought I would have more time to rekindle the friendship that Scott and I once had – but I guess I was wrong. I think that’s the lesson out of this too. Don’t count on having enough time to make things right with someone. It’s never too soon to make amends.
