Thoughts on a passing

That's Joey Eger. He graduated from Princeton in 2005. He passed away this last Friday, killed by a train. It might've been suicide.

Today was his funeral, and I've been thinking lately about how the use of the the internet, in particular of Web 2.0, has changed our legacies. I certainly don't have anything profound to say about the subject, and definitely nothing that hasn't been said a dozen times by other folks out on the web, so please don't look for anything truly profound today (not that I frequently offer such words)...just a few thoughts...

On Sunday, I saw the following series of comments under the above video on YouTube:

• avagrantmind: he died irl I think
• avagrantmind: search for "joey eger" on google and look for like something from wkrc wcpo or local12 he got hit by a train
• paintsmeblue: rest in peace <3

I don't have a clue who either of the commentors (sp?) are, but from their profiles, I'm guessing they were either friends of Joey's or friends of friends. Either way, the surrealness of a comment like he died irl I think shocks me. I'm still able to see Joey because he's right there on the video, right there on my computer screen.

And then there's the oddness of what will happen to his posted videos now that he's gone. There's nobody at YouTube who is going to take those down just because he's passed away, nobody who knows in the least that he's gone. His profile lists "last login: 7 days ago", and that's about the only thing that's going to change. As far as that page is concerned, Joey's just changed accounts or flitted his attention someplace else.

My family wasn't a home movie kind of family. I've got video of my dad somewhere around because he was on tv from time to time - he teaches a government class in which they cover local elections and interview candidates - and I've got one of me teaching a class when I was in college, but I don't know that I've a single video of my sister or mother, and I know I don't have one of The Girl anywhere. We're all just a little too old to do what Joey did and video tape some stupid evening, some dumb afternoon, and throw it out there for the whole world to see. I guess there are a couple of me on my school site, but that's about it. Joey will live forever, weirdly, on YouTube. I don't know if that's a good or a bad thing. It's a thing.

I did what the second commentor suggested. I searched for "joey eger" on google. Here's hit #2. She apparently lived below Joey. She must've known him because she's got a great picture of him.

...

The funeral today was impressively moving, particularly when Joey father and brother played "Amazing Grace" on guitar and violin. The ceremony offered what most folks there needed - a time to grieve and say goodbye, a community of mourners. The funeral is the right place for that, we're all sad but sad together.

I'm pretty firmly a atheist (or, at best, an apatheist), and it got me to wondering what's going to happen when I slip this mortal coil. I would like to think that there will be some people who would like that same sort of time to grieve my passing, but where would such a place be, what would such a ceremony look like for an apatheist? The Catholic religion does a marvelous job of providing people comfort and routine/ceremony on which they can rely, allowing their body to go on auto-pilot while they grieve.

There are actually a number of times that I wish I had that same faith, that belief that there was some higher power guiding us, that we would eventually be redeemed in some fashion, but I don't have it. I wasn't trained into it, and I haven't found it on my own.

...

Joey's the third student of mine that I've known to have died. The first died while I was still his teacher. It was my first year in Terre Haute, Indiana, and I don't even remember his name. At the time, I couldn't have told you anything about him other than his name, his grade, and what he looked like. I don't think I knew a single thing that he was interested in or a hobby that he had. I had no clue who he was. He died in a car accident one weekend that year.

The second was Chris Dyer, a student that I had for two years, both of whose sisters I taught. Chris died a Marine's death a year or so after he graduated from Princeton. He was in Iraq and had a fully military funeral when he came home. His parents used the death benefit money to set up a scholarship given to a Princeton student each year. I've known both recipients of that scholarship. I was closer to Chris than I was the other kid. I knew Chris.

Joey falls somewhere in between. I certainly knew who he was, and I knew of a lot of his hobbies. He was a goofy kid in high school, and he had a few challenges in college as he had a couple of alcohol violations in his dorm and had to go through some prescribed counseling program. As you can see in some of his other videos, he was a part-time rapper and an idiot who was willing to do just about anything on his way off a diving board. I've had dozens of students that I've known better than I knew Joey, but I at least knew something more about him than his grades (which weren't, admittedly, always the best in my class).

I don't know that I'll actually miss Joey, as I rarely thought of him unless somebody else mentioned that they'd seen him or heard from him recently. His passing won't exactly leave a void in my life. There are always cliches - all true - about it being tragic when a young person dies, but it happens all the time. Horrible people and wonderful souls get struck down just as easily.

I wish I had something more profound to say.

I wish I had one last chance to say something to JoJo, the decidedly not dog-faced boy.

I wish I could help his brother, whom I have in class this year, and lots of their friends who I saw crying at the funeral today make sense out of any of it.

G'night, Joey.

G'night, folks.