so today is the five year anniversary of brock's death, july 29th would have been his 28th birthday. and i've decided to post a bunch of memories b/c i think when someone dies, especially tragically, things happen so suddenly that so often you remember how everyone treated you after the fact. and you remember all of the events of that day, but the person and the memories you shared seem to take a backseat. it's true that i can't take my eyes off the clock today; five yars ago at this moment he was flying, five years ago at this moment, his plane crashed, five years ago i received the phone call, five years ago i was at the hospital, five years ago he took his last breath, etc. etc.

i encourage anyone who has a Brock memory to post them, it's a way of remembering the very essence of Brock, and not just his death.



so the first time i met brock, as an adult, i was sitting on the very last pew on the right side of temple with heather and anna and my sister, i think. and heather said, "brock, this is kelly carter." and he looked at me and said, "i know who you are."

he used to be the teen center director at the CFOT and while driving a van home full of teens, he would listen to the radio. if a song he liked came on, he would grab the fist of the front seat passenger and stick out only their pointer finger. he would clasp their fist while singing into their finger like it was a microphone.

when the weather turned cooler, brock and i would sit on his front porch. he would play his guitar and we would sing songs; the barenaked ladies, counting crows, dave...

he would always watch television with all of the lights turned out.

one time, before we were dating, i took a cd down to the teen center, popped it in and listened to the song Call and Answer. There's this one line that I sung out loud, "I think it's time to make this something that is more than only friends..." Later that evening, as I was leaving he said, "you know, the line is: 'I think it's time to make this something that is more than only fair.' " He always called me out like that. and i hated it.

one autumn we drove out to tallulah gorge and hiked to the bottom of the falls, it was something like 1100 steps to the bottom, which wasn't so bad. but the hike up was quite strenous. brock said, "get on my back." like that was going to happen. i made sure to make it to the top before he did.

that last night, the day before his death, we were supposed to meet for dinner and he was really late. when he finally arrived, he said he had been talking to bill (his mentor). i found out in the days that followed that he had been sharing his testimony with Bill. he didn't know that would be the last time.

five years

posted by Kelly @ 8:45:00 AM