Most of the time our full Christian names are used in ceremonies and legal work.
You were first known to me as Bobby Day. And I probably first met you in first grade. Sure, you were in Kindergarten class, but in those ancient early 1980s, there was still Morning Kindergarten and Afternoon Kindergarten at Bement School District No. 5. Morning was for "townies" and Afternoon was for "country." I was one of those "townies" and you were one of those "country."
I'm sure if I could track down all of the class group photographs through our Elementary and Middle School years I would remember when we had the same grade school or middle school teachers. I know we shared many field trips.
Even in those early years, I can recall you being between our emerging class athletes and our emerging scholars. Sure, there was a little scholarship among the athletes as there was a little athletic prowess among the scholars. You didn't shun either, and seem to move freely between both worlds, often laughing and sharing those invaluable tokens of friendship that seem to radiate from your positive, if a little shy, developing personality.
Whatever you seem to focus upon, you did well. No, some academic subjects were not your best, but no one would doubt your tenacity in trying. Some excelled while others struggled. You may have barely crossed it, but you finished all the same.
As those children of the eighties became the awkward young adults of the early nineties, you changed from Bobby to Bob. The event that I will always recall involving you and I in those early adulthood days was both of us struggling a bit in Mr. Hensley's biology class Freshman year. And so we agreed to cheat. I would allow just enough of my test answers to show and you would somehow arrive at the same answers.
But having the exact same answers gave away our cheating conspiracy. We were both summoned into Mr. Hensley's office in the Chemistry lab and were informed that the next time we planned to do that, one of us should at least change one of our answers so they would not be exactly the same.
And we never cheated in science classes again.
Our 1994 Bement High School yearbook makes a good gateway back to those memories long forgotten. Of course my high school activities centered around music; your activities were athletics. But if Bement High School had a Future Farmers of America chapter in the early 1990s, there would be no doubt in anyone's mind who would be involved. You. That calling into agriculture was present early and impossible for you to resist.
Being fellow classmates in a small town school forms unbreakable bonds of friendship. We completed our studies together, and each moved into other chapters, other places to start new life, form new relationships, find loving partners, and raise our own children. Many of those small town values of faith, community service, and helping others remain as markers of our identity. Your legacy is a rich tapestry of those values loved and lived.
In the busyness of life, we often believe that we will always have time to reconnect, to reminisce, and perhaps naively, live long into our healthy, seeming invincible lives.
But mortality has already brushed near to our 1994 class. Strokes and heart attacks have touched a few of our classmates, me included
And then came the tragic news of you passing from us. Suddenly the fragile nature of life came into our everyday, seemingly invincible middle ages.We knew someday the common fate of all living things would begin its painful harvest. We did not know that you would be the first to cross the threshold of eternity.
We were all given a special person to share our lives with in just forty-one years.
We are shocked, upset, angry, and grieving at your passing from our lives.
We will feel your absence every time we gather again as the Bement High School Class of 1994.
There will be that empty chair, that silence where there used to be the sounds of your contagious laughter and gregarious personality.
We will keep vigil and share our stories of you and our love with your grieving widow Kristina and your beloved son Lukus Dean.
Bobby, Bob, Robert Dean Day, you will be carried in our hearts, in our thoughts, until each of us cross the threshold.
And when we do, I know the first sound we will each hear.
The sound of your laugh.
