My own post about Sheyn
admin October 1st, 2007
I met Sheyn when I was 14. He sat behind me in class and talked to me, a lot, no matter what I said back to him. Like everyone I know who has met Sheyn, we became friends.
He always struck me as very animated. He is the one friend I’ve known who has always had a smile on his face, and yet he was not someone who was always happy with everything that came his way. He just loved who he was talking to, no matter who it was, and so he’d always laugh or find something to smile about in the conversation. It only strikes me now how much like Christ that must have been.
We survived high school together, and he was in my clique so to speak so we hung out a lot. He was one of the people who drug me kicking and screaming to church where I was saved that night. We took classes together in High School as well sometimes. During a particularly long school board meeting we were required to attend, Sheyn found a seat near me and we listened to the board go over an impasse for literally hours. 3 hours of tie votes were becoming noticeably irritating with even the board members themselves let alone the audience. Whenever one would try to end it by voting for the other side, another would try the same thing and a tie would result.
Sheyn poked me “Dude, let’s yell ‘Draw straws’ after the next vote is announced”, and Sheyn’s manic enthusiasm took me over immediately and I thought it was the greatest idea I’d ever heard…”Yeahhhh…we should do that”.
The votes were announced. It was a tie…again. I counted “1, 2, 3…DRAW STRAWS!!!!!!!” only to realize I’d been the only one to yell it out! Sheyn was laughing, and thankfully so was everyone else as I hid quickly. We made the paper. Sort of “A young voice offered ‘Draw Straws’” the paper had said, as people showed me the article the next day.
When I recounted this with him a couple of months ago he looked at me and just said “But…I didn’t make the paper, you did”. I think I just muttered “I guess…”and again it strikes me as I write this…there could have been no story without him, and I never made it clear why I thought he was so important in that memory.
Sheyn worked with me after high school and we shared a lot of crazy times that I won’t go into here. They are memories only he and I shared at times, and even if I could find a new friend as special as Sheyn, you can never replace someone you shared a memory with.
Sheyn and I were often on a different path. He came in and out of my life as the years went by, but there was that instantaneous connection that I think you can only get with the best of friends. I think, I was not one of Sheyn’s best friends, but he was certainly one of mine.
Sheyn was diagnosed early in 2007 with kidney cancer, and I found out about it and immediately wrote him. We went to a prayer meeting and went to lunch/dinner. It put me at ease, and it was like old times. He seemed okay, and we mostly talked about stuff, not his illness. We joked a lot and had a lot of fun.
Afterwards we wrote back and forth. I was blessed to be able to be some support for him, and to tell him in between these things a small portion of how much he meant to me and what a great person I thought he was. I mentioned his “natural love and acceptance of people” and a “heart to do [Gods] will”. We could never iron out when to meet next, sometimes I was busy, sometimes he was…and I’ll always regret that.
Too soon afterwards someone wrote me he was gone. I was angry at such a sick joke being sent to me…while I phoned Sheyns number, angry at having not called earlier…I got voice mail. I left a fragmented message, asking Sheyn to call me back. When the phone rang I was relieved, it was Sheyns number, and then a possibility hit me as I answered that was confirmed nearly simultaneously. It was not Sheyn on the line.
Sheyns mother told me the news, and I was barely able to speak, and barely having the sense to give her my condolences. We hung up and I was shattered…changed, in a way I don’t think time will ever completely mend.
2 days later, I was rushed to the hospital with some issue with my kidneys…I was in severe pain and utterly helpless. Fear gripped me after I was mistreated by one of the medical staff and I realized I could do nothing about it. More medicated but still feeling vulnerable later, the MRI machine enveloped me and I realized in a small way how very scared my friend must have been.
My news was considerably better…kidney stone.
I realized later that some of the suddenness of death was partly because of how he’d protected me from the details many times. He’d confided his fear, but never the full extent of what was going on. But I think he didn’t have time to go into even the small detail I put in this story. He was trying to survive and to live life while it was there to live. Maybe there’s a lesson there too.
The stone remained for what is now weeks, but the pain subsided long enough for me to attend the funeral. I will always be grateful I was able to do that.
A few days later I was sitting with my son and opted to read him a bedtime story, something my wife usually does. He was so happy, and couldn’t sleep because he felt so special that I was doing this (Usually I’m in the rough’em up, toss the ball dept.!), and he was so cute with his excitement and his smile I began to (let’s just say “tear up”)…and I got a picture in my mind of how strong and at peace Sheyn must be now with the Father in heaven, and I realized that the love Sheyn gave to us while he was here was not completely gone from the Earth. It is in every act of kindness we give to those we love, to a stranger, and even those who sometimes mistreat us. I guess I hope that by being a little kinder we can bring back some of that which we’ve lost to a world that so desperately needs it.
This, and why Hendrix is the best guitar player the world has ever seen, are a few of the things I’ve learned from my time knowing Sheyn…
…and that BonJovi waved to him out of a car window once, and that chicks dig musicians, and that rap music isn’t really music, and that chicks dig chefs, and that the guy from Good Times really is an “Arteest”, and that the guy who played winchester conducted an orchestra once, and that to sing in an operatic voice you must constantly warm up, even in a quiet room with unprepared people nearby, and that Sebastian Bach once asked him to a party, and that he likes spicy food, and that Axyl Rose totally apparently chickened out of a fight with Vince Neil……