found, dead.
As you know, James’ body was found today. Everyone I know is devastated. Everyone I know is angry, depressed, frustrated and just...sad. We were all hoping against hope and thought, I think we all thought, that if we all just hoped hard enough that James would be found alive, no matter what our worries were. I kept imagining finding him so hard that I have an actual mental picture of him emerging from a helicopter, exhausted, cold, unshaven and smiling.
An it’s a fiction. He died, alone, and, as Pepe remarked, under the impression that his family was not going to be saved. That he had failed them.
It’s a terrible, terrible tragedy and I cannot believe that I am writing about it. Whit called me while I was on my way back from an audition (that was acting, being there, let me tell you) and I heard myself say, “They found James’ body,” and I could feel my whole body shudder, all in time with my quavering voice and quivering lip.
I mean, this is how I feel and I was just a fan of his, someone who was happy to see his name on a byline, someone who approached him a bit shyly in person, unsure of whether or not he remembered me. I cannot imagine how his family feels. How Kati must feel. Whether or not his daughters can truly comprehend what is happening.
So, James died, alone, trying to help his family. Al remarked that it was so frustratingly like a wannabe Krakauer novel that it was infuriating to acknowledge that this was real. James’ death is hitting us hard: he is our age, of our time, he lived our lives and pushed forward, having kids earlier than most of us, smiling all the way. He had found a great wife in Kati and together they had made it possible for us to imagine that one could live life and have two kids. And now he’s gone and we look at these news reports, we see our friend smiling at us from CNN.com and then we realize, that’s it, the search is over. James was found and we are lost.
Wednesday, December 6, 2006