There’s no point in rehashing the details, but it was exactly one year ago that Shaun Lumachi was taken from us, and it would feel false to me to let it go by without a bit of reflection.
They say that the most difficult moments in the wake of losing a loved one are the firsts—the first Christmas without him, his birthday, etc. Now it’s been a year, which means the calendrical firsts have passed, as they were bound to do. The reminders are always there, but as time passes perhaps they lose their dramatic pull. I clearly remember our first post-Shaun print edition and how odd it seemed to do it without him. Now there have been a dozen, and it’s just the way things are.
In a 2010 interview, writer and public intellectual Christopher Hitchens, dying from the esophageal cancer that would claim his life within a year, spoke of a certain dismay he felt not only to be leaving the party a bit earlier than he would have liked, but that the party would continue on without him. So it has and so it does, without Hitch, without Shaun, eventually without every one of us. It seems unjust in every way, save that it is one of those rare areas of life in which all of us are dealt with equally. Life ends, life goes on.
I have thought of my friend often over the past year. Whenever I post something under the Business section, I smile because I know he would have liked that. More than once I have laughed at an unbidden recollection of something he said (or even just the way he said it). Whenever he comes up in conversation with one or another of my Long Beach Post colleagues, it’s never morosely, because that just wasn’t him.
There are sad mementos, of course. His phone number is still in my list of contacts; I still have the last texts and e-mails he sent. It may be mawkish, but I don’t want to let those go.
I also keep the blue rubber bracelet I picked up from a table at his public memorial service. WHAT WOULD SHAUN DO? it asks in white lettering. The question is rhetorical and motivational, but it has some definite answers. Considering that Shaun was a guy whose favorite phrase was, “What’s next?” one of them is obvious.
The continuing itself is not the tricky part; the devil is in the details, the how. Whether or not you believe in the literality of spirits or angels, it’s not so hard to imagine a lost loved one, freed from the bonds of corporeality, looking over your shoulder and seeing you and your deeds when there’s no one in the world to bear witness. Such an idea should not be a haunting, but an inspiration.
I like the thought that Shaun is still around, in some sense, seeing what we do, smiling or getting pissed off and goading us forward, wanting us to move on to what’s next and make it better.
And if he is, I’m glad he can see that he is remembered and loved.