It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was high school, and for each and everyone of us who endured these 3-5 years of our lives, it played a huge part in shaping who we are today… good or bad. My high school experience in some ways was no different than most except for one detail… size. You see, I attended the smallest public high school in Arizona. There were less than 120 students from kindergarten to 12th grade and a grand total of 40 high schoolers. My graduating class had six kids, and my five classmates had been together since kindergarten and were in some way related. This was not your average school. Everyone knew and had to get along with each other. There were no real cliques because there weren’t enough students to form them. To say the least, it was a tight-knit community, and every student (related or not) was intertwined.

So when I got the call today from my dad letting me know one of the guys I went to school with had died yesterday, it hit pretty close to home. I had been on the track team with him for three years, and he’d played on my dad’s basketball team for four. We had spent countless hours together, and I knew that was the case for every other kid who had gone to school with him. Everyone knew his name, and he knew theirs. We all hold a memory of who he was and how he touched our lives, and now everyone will come together to grieve this loss and comfort those he left behind. It isn’t an easy road that lays before this community, but as always, they’ll get through it together.