I have tried throughout the week to write something clever and funny. I can’t.
I have tried to write something about chilidogs or drinking too much on my day off, something to brighten the mood and get us to smile again, yet, despite my best attempts, nothing seems capable or timely or even sufficient to lighten the darkness of youth lost so young in a town so desperate for the idealism that only youth’s vision can possess.
I had never met Matt Garcia in person. I spoke with him several times over the phone, mostly during his election bid. Rarely do editorial assistants enjoy the courtesy of having our names’ remembered by anyone other than PRs and MRs and the LTTE folks.
But Matt remembered me and my name. Some would say it was because we had the same name but he gave me the impression that he would have remembered my name no matter what it was.
He spoke to me with as if he genuinely cared; much the way I have heard others in the community speak of how he spoke to them.
He listened, rather than spoke; a trait all too rare in many politicians.
I will not speak of who he was or what he still is; of what he meant and still means to this city, to the future and to the people whose lives he touched – there are people who knew him far better than I did who can testify to that far better than I ever could.
I will only say that he was a man I wished I could have known; a man, though younger than myself, who I admired; and a man who carried a cause few in this world have the strength to hold.
I will say just this and let it be.
Stand tall, young prince, as you walk into the unknown, we will care to the tending of The Field in your absence; and though you are gone, if just in being, the seeds of change you planted in the child of us all will one day blossom into the beauty you magnificently once envisioned.
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