Seventeen Years Without Bradley Jameson
And how I spend each anniversary - 09/16/07
17 years ago, I was a freshman in college at the University of Arkansas when I woke to 76 missed calls and learned that Bradley Jameson fell from a tree. A silly f*cking tree. And he died.
Each year, as I sit down to write about Bradley — I’m riddled anxious before I begin to put the words to paper.
How do you continue to encapsulate someone you’ve now lived almost double the time they’ve been gone?
As the years trudge on, I worry I’ve forgotten him. At the very least, the him who was actually alive: wide-eyed, young and vibrant. A joker, a child, impulsive, a boy on the fringe of a man. Flawed, like us all, but why it seems I can hardly recall now.
We glorify the dead — in tragedy, we reconstruct them as nearly angelic in their earthly state. I admit, I’ve done it too.
And I worry because I don’t remember now just quite why Bradley was not perfect, only that he wasn’t, nor was he a teetotaler. Far from. To paint him as either is a disservice to his humanity — his imperfections — and the entirety of a boy who was navigating through the waves of adolescence, like us all.
What I do know for certain about Bradley is much what anyone is left with when a close one dies: I remember how he made me feel. And I remember how his love felt.
As teenagers, our friendship was confusing though it didn’t feel as such while in those final years. But when I read diary entries of that time period, well, I guess it’s funny what age and reflection does to your reality.
We loved each other in the purest teenage sense, that much I know to be true. Would we have skirted the line, crossed the boundary, swam to the other side of that love as we aged — I’ll never know. For that, I’m grateful.
The only thing I do: in the final months of his life, there was no one I felt closer to, or more protected.
It’s not that Bradley protected in the way a parent does for a child or a partner to another, far from. In fact, I’d guarantee I served as his sober driver far more than he ever did for me. That I fretted after him like a mother hen to her chicks in a very visceral, teenage sense. But, that wasn’t the protection I sought from him back at that age.
I sought emotional protection — and that was his true gift to me in this life. I can’t speak for his relationship to others, but I can speak to the way he watched how much I ate in those early days of the eating disorder that would one day rule my life.
The way he’d follow my fork with his eyes at a table, and lean over: “take another bite please.”
Or how, one night in those final summer nights before we started college, I’d had people over while my parents were out of town (how very high school, I now reckon), And it was Bradley who stayed up with me into the wee hours shaking out black trash bags and picking up the empty beer cans and cigarette filters strewn about the yard, while still sipping our own beers like the invincible fools we thought we were at that age.
How we fell into my bed afterwards giggling quietly as others laid passed out in the rooms adjacent to my childhood bedroom. Smelling of beer and sticky punch, our feet likely blackened on the bottoms with dirt and grass, he asked quietly if he could hold me while we slept, and I nodded.
The only time we’d ever sleep like this, our legs intertwined, his strong teenage arm big spooning and pulling me into him, I still to this day don’t know why this unfolded that particular night - of so many in those days - but I remember laying there sleepy awake, listening to the sound of his light snore in my ear. In all of our years, it was the closest, likely softest, we’d ever been to one another:
And I loved him deeply, hugging his arm around my chest, like a shield, as I drifted off to wherever it is that we go when we sleep.
The next morning, a friend would burst into my room and see the two of us sleeping there — he’d pause abruptly as we stirred:
“Did I … interrupt something?” He’d say, smirking.
“No,” we’d both insist - breaking away from each other and brushing away the hangover in our eyes.
“Alright lovebirds. Well you’re gonna be like 30 minutes late to class dude, thought I’d let you know.”
“Shit,” Bradley would mumble. “God why did I agree to summer school?”
“Let’s go,” I’d summon. “You’re going. Brush your teeth, there’s an extra brush under my sink. I’ll get in the car.”
I was off the bed and walking towards my closet for a clean t-shirt as I said it, and I remember the way he stared at me as I walked around the room.
“You’re so annoying,” he mumbled, a hint of a grin appearing.
“I know,” I grinned back. “But you love me.”
He groaned. “I do, but you’re busting my balls as always you tyrant.”
He loved that phrase. He used it often, and while I don’t anymore remember my reaction to when he said it — I’m sure I rolled my eyes characteristically and stomped off in some dramatic, huffy fashion.
Because — as with any relationship — you each take on roles, whatever those roles may be, you assume them and you act within them more often than not.
And this was ours — the snarky and sass — as it had always been, and will forever stay.
Less than two months after that night, Bradley would climb a tree at the University of Mississippi and for reasons I’ll never make sense of - a branch would snap. He’d die the next day on September 16, 2007 in a ICU hospital bed in Memphis, Tennessee.
I’d like to gloss over the history of the next year following his death and write that I knew exactly then and there what has worked best for me in terms of how to honor his memory on these inevitable anniversaries.
But, I’d be whitewashing the immediate year after his death, which in retrospect felt barely survivable: an endless grey day, I’ve described it, with no break in the clouds for sun.
I preface what I’m going to write next with that disclosure above because I think it’s important to honor the legacy and process of grief as a complex and eternal event. One that comes with no manual or stationary feeling.
While this whole post is meant to center around the idea of tradition in honoring the dead: I actually don’t remember doing anything memorable the first year after Bradley’s death. I don’t remember where I was or how I spent that day, only that I have a strong suspicion of who I was with since it was our other best friend who I know felt his absence as strongly as I did. The two of us heavily reliant on each other in the aftermath of the tragedy, I have no doubt we spent the day together wayward and dazed, likely drinking in our dorm rooms — much as we spent the entire year leading up to it.
The only documented history I know about that first year anniversary is a Facebook status I posted that day:
“Lindsey Hall is one year, ten years, twenty, i will always feel your absence. i love you and think about you everyday BMJ.”
Suffice it to say, it wouldn’t be until the following year - on his second anniversary - that the buds of an anniversary tradition would bloom — one that has now continued on for 16 more anniversaries, into today.
The first year, arguably the tradition seeds were planted after I’d compiled the hours of video footage I had of Bradley in high school (I fancied myself quite the videographer in those days) and in what I now think was a delusional grief state to try and keep him alive - even if just through film - I made a 1.5 hour video of Bradley and friends that I’d gift to everyone near us that Christmas.
On his second anniversary, while reviewing the leftover video footage in yet another delulu attempt to revive him from the dead - I’d end up compiling a short, 3-minute video that I’d upload to YouTube back when YT was still in its early days. (Seen below in all its grainy glory)
It was during that anniversary that I first had the thought:
“I should do something meaningful every year. I should do something for Bradley.”
It’s not that it made me feel any better, persay, in fact I’d argue the first three years nothing ever felt better. It was more just an endless quest for empty self-soothing, and often unsuccessful.
But, there was something about doing … well, something, that felt a whole lot more meaningful than doing absolutely nothing at all.
In retrospect, I didn’t really entertain the idea far past that very thought, but it stuck with me throughout the year and when the third year rolled around and I was faced with the choice to either work a double shift at the downtown Fayetteville, Arkansas sushi restaurant or instead tag along last minute on a road trip to Texas Tech (conveniently one of the last road trips I’d taken with Bradley as well), I threw caution to the wind and went for it … thus fully setting off what would become a lifetime of tradition on these anniversary dates.
From that point forward, tradition was sealed. As I wandered the Lubbock bar streets I’d once sauntered down next to Bradley, I promised myself that as the years went on, no matter where I was, I’d do something unique: that no anniversary would ever pass without a signature mark of novelty.
That Bradley was not here to live out his life any longer: to see the tops of mountains, wander streets, watch the sunrise, plant a garden — but the rest of us were still here, drudging along - living in spite of him. Living through him. Living surrounded in all his bright energy he gave to the 18 years he was on this planet.
Every year since, I’ve make the effort to have a unique experience: to praise the life I have on this earth. To pick my head up from the monotony of day-to-day life to feel wholly alive, in whatever way that comes.
What that’s looked like over the years is this:
Martin Prechtel wrote: “grief is praise of those we have lost. Our own souls who have loved and are now heartbroken would turn to stone and hate us if we did not show such praise when we lose whom we love… if we do not grieve what we miss, we are not praising what we love. We are not praising the life we have been given in order to love. If we do not praise whom we miss, we are ourselves in some way dead. So grief and praise make us alive.”
Tonight, I’ll go to a concert in a city I barely know.
And, I’m sure that some song at some point in the night — will choke me up, hot tears to my eyes.
I’ll thank you for the gift of grief: it is a privilege to miss you, to have walked this earth with you.
There is so little I know in this existence:
My love for you, however, a certainty amidst the confusion.
As David Byrne sings: “Life is long, if you give it away.”
Thanks to you, I know I never will.
So beautiful 😻🥹
Thanks for sharing this with the world.
One day, there will be a young person shattered by loss who finds your post -- and they will feel less alone.
Hi Lindsey,
I hope this message finds you well! I just wanted to say how much I enjoy your blogs. Your travel experiences are truly inspiring, especially the way you explore different parts of the world.
I’m curious to hear more about your experience at the Haiwaiina Waterfalls. It sounds incredible! Have you had the chance to visit any waterfalls in Africa? I’d love to hear your thoughts!