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| Gio, Dave, & Ben looking sharp at prom 2009 |
I usually
feel like a little sister because I have 3 older sisters who spoil me. I’ve looked up to them, enjoyed their
hand-me-downs, and learned from their experiences. But there was something that happened last
year that made my heart feel like a big
sister:
I helped my little brother Dave pick out his outfit for his
friend’s funeral. Which shirt and tie? Which shoes?
It felt so unreal—like a 26-year-old sister should help her 22-year-old
brother pick out an outfit for a wedding or for a job interview, but not for
his friend’s funeral. It’s too tragic;
it shouldn’t be a part of normal life.
I was visiting
my sister’s family in Kansas for Thanksgiving when I got the news that Ben
Rogers had died in a motorcycle accident.
After Thanksgiving, my sister dropped me off at the airport. As I waited to board my plane, I got on
facebook and looked at all the photos Ben’s friends posted of him. I read the captions describing their
memories. I looked at the pictures of my
brother with Ben, and I sobbed there in the airport.
The word loss felt so tangible to me in that
moment. I thought of the song lyric,
“The sharp knife of a short life.” The
loss felt so sharp and so unreal. How
could Ben’s life be cut short like this? He was 22 years old. “The sharp knife of a
short life” cut through our community. In
an instant, in the sharp pain, we realized that Ben and his huge personality
and giving heart had touched so many, and no one wanted to imagine life without
him.
I thought
of Ben’s smile when he’d walk through the door at my parents’ house as he came
to pick Dave up to go somewhere. I
remember Ben and a few other guys—usually Chris and Gio—who would come over to play
video games with Dave, and I’d roll my eyes at their teenage-guy jokes and not
understand how they could eat so much food.
I thought about how Ben would sit on the couch with us to watch a ball
game, and he’d tell some stories that would make us shake our head and laugh.
I thought
of how I saw Ben almost every time I’d go to Marsh. He’d be stocking the freezers, and I would pat
his shoulder and say, “Hey, Ben!” as I walked through the aisle. He’d turn around and give me his big
smile. Sometimes we’d chat for a few
minutes. After Dave decided not to go
back to college in Kansas, I saw Ben in Marsh and asked him, “Did you hear that
Dave is moving back to town?”
Ben said,
“Yeah. I’m not sad about that.” He
smiled, and I chuckled at how he was never shy about his loyalty and love for
my brother.
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| Dave & Ben |
Dave
remembers that he and Ben met each other as sophomores in their church youth
group. Dave and Ben were in the same small group. Dave said, “Before I knew Ben really well, I
remember thinking he was fun, cool to talk to, and definitely really smart. If
the small group leader asked what we talked about last week, Ben would be the
first to remember. His memory was better
than everyone else’s.”
Ben’s mom Julie
agrees that Ben had an impressive memory.
She told us that when Ben was little, he was never interested in TV, but
when they’d go to see a movie, Ben could quote the lines out of the movie—even
though he had only seen it once. She
especially remembers Ben doing this with the movie Elf. It was the same with music. If he heard a song
one time, he could come home and figure out how to play it on the piano.
Ben’s dad Chuck
told us, “Ben had to want to remember it.”
We laughed because we knew that Ben was driven toward the things he
liked, but could have easily forgotten things he didn’t care about.
When Ben
was in boy scouts, he mapped out his course and rode his bike 150 miles over a
total of 7 different routes to earn the biking merit badge. Some of
those routes went through Shelbyville.
Dave told us, “Every time we would be in Shelbyville, Ben would say, ‘I
rode my bike through here.’ He could remember where all the roads went.”
Once after
Ben’s high school swim meet, Julie asked Ben if he wanted to ride home with her
instead of riding the bus. She knew he
was hungry after swimming, and she thought he could eat sooner if he rode with
her. Unfortunately, Julie got lost since
she was unfamiliar with the area. She was in tears, but Ben said, “Trust me,
Mom, I’ve been out here on my bike.” He
remembered the roads, knew where to go, and got them home.
Ben also
had a great memory when it came to his job at Marsh. Dave said, “When Ben,
Chris, and I were working at Marsh together, we memorized the numeric codes for
the produce. Ben would open up the
fridge at my house and say, ‘Hey, Dave, do you want 4008 on your sandwich? Or
some 4508?’ And once at Chris’s house,
we named off 8 different codes, and we thought we were pretty funny.”
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| Dave & Ben fake puking on the plane coming home from Brazil |
Dave said,
“Our friendship took off when we on the Brazil mission trip together. Ben and I
were friends before that, but we didn’t hang out much outside of church because
we went to different schools. But on the
trip, he really wanted to sit next to me on the bus as we traveled around. He’d
say, ‘Hey, Dave, you can sit here.’ He
had my seat already there for me.”
The guys
loved the Brazilian food, and Dave remembers that Ben loved the bisteca and the churros. After their trip to Brazil, Ben and Dave had dinner a few
times at the Brazilian restaurant Fogo de Chao in Indianapolis. Ben was generous and paid for Dave’s dinner
one time. Ben’s brother Joey said that
Ben would go about 3 days without food just to prepare for going to Fogo De
Chao. They would stuff themselves with all the meat.
When they
were in Brazil, the guys—Dave, Ben, Chris, and Josh—ate pizza for dinner one
night. Dave said, “Ben ate 18 slices of
pizza. I ate 13 or 14. And Josh and Chris probably ate 15.” Dave joked that Ben could put the food away.
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| Josh, Chris, Dave, & Ben after their big pizza meal in Brazil |
My parents
called Ben the human garbage disposal.
He would always eat leftovers out of our fridge. He’d ask if he could
eat something, and my mom would warn him that it was probably too old. But he’d taste it and say, “No, this is still
good. This would be good for another 2 days.”
So when Mom had a lot of leftovers, she’d joke that we needed to invite
Ben over. J
His mom Julie
said Ben wasn’t always like that. When
he was younger, he didn’t have a big appetite.
But then as he got older, and they were eating their holiday meals, he’d
say, “I’m going to try that this time.”
All of sudden, he’d eat anything.
I asked if Ben
had any favorite foods beside meat.
“Green
beans,” Ben’s dad Chuck said. “He could put away a large can all by himself.”
Julie said
that he also loved cake and Grandma’s apple pies! J
Dave said
that once they were at some friends’ house, and they showed them their dirt
bike. Ben knew how to do it right away
and was popping wheelies. When it was Dave’s
turn, he killed it a few times and finally figured it out. Then when it was Chris’s turn, he ran the
bike straight into the thorn bush. Ben
never let them forget that.
Ben’s older
brother Joey said, “Ben kept bugging me to let him drive my truck.” Ben had never driven a stick shift before,
but he kept bugging Joey about it. Joey
said he finally gave in and let him drive, and surprisingly—or not surprisingly
because Ben was good at that stuff—Ben figured it out quickly.
Ben also
was persistent and persuasive with his parents in letting him do new
things. Chuck joked, “Ben could talk a
hobo into hiring him.”
Julie said,
“He would plead his case with me beautifully, and as a mom, I’d think, I’m not going to win this one. I’d tell Ben, ‘You should just be a lawyer!’”
Once Ben
and Chris were spending time with Dave and our family at the lake. It was the 4th of July, and they
decided to build a sparkler bomb.
I asked
Dave, “What in the world is a sparkler bomb?”
“You take
like 1,000 sparklers and a bunch of electrical tape, smash them all together,
and tape it all up, leaving one for a fuse to light it… Ben was so driven
toward the sparkler bomb. He was like,
‘We’re going to make this happen.’
“It takes a
good whole day to make it. We put it under
a bucket. When we lit it off, we ran about 50 yards away, and shards of the
bucket were flying past our face. It was
the loudest boom I’d ever heard.”
Ben was
laughing as he ran. Later that night, Dave remembers Ben laying there in bed
and smiling because he was so proud of himself and the sparkler bomb they made. He was saying, “I’m going to show Gio; Gio
will really like it.”
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| Another impressive project by Chris, Ben, & Dave |
Even though
Ben and Dave didn’t go to the same school, Ben came to several of Dave’s
basketball games and found his way into the student cheer block. Ben didn’t
know the other students from Dave’s school, but by the end of the season, Ben
was leading the cheer block in cheers. Dave remembers at his sectional game,
Ben was leading the cheer, “Alligator, alligator, eat ‘em up, eat ‘em up!” The
whole cheer block was doing it with him!
Dave was
lucky to have the best cheerleader rooting for him. For those who knew Ben, it’s easy to imagine
his big smile and gusto in a cheer block.
Ben’s focus was to cheer others on—to be there for his friends to
encourage them.
Julie
remembers that Ben would tell her, “I’m going to Dave’s for a little bit.” She never thought about the distance. It wasn’t
until they went to Dave’s graduation open house that Ben’s parents realized Dave’s
house wasn’t just down the road, but was actually 20 miles away. But Ben didn’t let the distance get in the way
of their friendship.
It was hard
to be as close when Dave moved to Kansas to go to college. But Dave remembers when he told Ben that he’d
be moving back to Indiana for good, Ben said, “That’s the best decision you’ve
made in awhile, Dave.”
A few
months after that, Dave told Ben that he wanted to plant churches. Ben told him, “If the Lord told you to do it,
then you need to do it.”
Dave said,
“He trusted me—that this was what I should pursue. He seemed to be real heartwarming toward me
because I chose that. He encouraged me in ministry even though he could have
pushed me toward business.”
At the time
of Ben’s accident, Ben was a full-time manager at Marsh, a full-time college student,
a volunteer at the Fire Department, and worked on the snow and ice removal crew
for Eli Lilly. He would work an hour
8-hour shift at Marsh and then a 12-hour shift for snow removal. And Dave remembers that even after working
hard at two shifts, he would still take time to text his friends to see if they
wanted to hang out. So we can see that in
addition to being a full-time manager and a full-time student, Ben was a
full-time friend.
I asked
Dave, “What is something you learned from Ben?”
Dave said,
“Just to be more aware of others than myself.
Ben was always aware of what I needed to be doing, even in the little
things. He would say, ‘Dave, you need to
try these chicken wings.’ Or ‘Dave, you shouldn’t go on the interstate because
there’s construction; you should go the other way instead.’”
Ben’s older
sister Rachel said that this is what she learned from Ben: She learned to take
her responsibilities seriously and take every chance to be with people who need
and want to be with her. Rachel and Joey
miss their baby brother like no words can express, but they have been inspired
by how well he loved his friends.
The more we
hear stories from Ben’s friends, the more we realize how incredibly
others-focused Ben was. Ben looked out
for his friends. Dave remembers Ben looking
out for girls he was friends with and telling them, “I don’t think you need to
date him. You could do better.”
Dave said,
“Ben had such an intrinsic motor. People
to see, people to talk to. He could be
close to so many people.” Ben’s dad
Chuck agrees.
Chuck said
that Ben always accepted people where they were. At Ben’s funeral, Chuck was amazed at how
many young people came up to him, shook his hand, and said, “Ben was my best
friend.” Ben took the time to spend with
his friends and was able to be really close with so many. Dave joked that Ben
probably would have been the best man in at least 10 weddings.
Today I saw
a quote about friendship that reminded me of Ben: “Friendship is the hardest thing in the world to explain. It's
not something you learn in school. But if you haven't learned the meaning of
friendship, you really haven't learned anything.”[1] Ben knew something
about friendship that most people don’t get.
I asked
Chuck and Julie if they learned new things about Ben from the stories that his
friends shared after his death.
“Absolutely,”
Chuck said. “He was another person outside of our family.”
Julie
agrees. She said, “Ben had a ministry
outside of our family that I didn’t know about. I think I know my kids really well—and I do—but
Ben had a ministry with his friends that I didn’t realize he had… But as a mom,
I can learn. I often wanted him to stay home more and relax with family. Now I can see how God was using him with his
friends.”
I like the
way Julie said Ben had a ministry with his friends. The Apostle Paul tells us in the Bible, “Be
devoted to one another in love. Honor
one another above yourselves” (Romans 12:10).
That verse describes Ben; that’s what his life was about. As Chuck considered the good that Ben did
with his friends, he said, “Ben lived more in 22 years than I have in my
lifetime.”
A few weeks
ago, on November 26, it was the 1-year anniversary of Ben’s death. Dave was at my house that night and said,
“Wow, I can’t believe it’s been a year since he’s been gone.” I know Dave would have given anything to have
more time with Ben.
When I
think back to last November when Ben died, my most prominent memory is the
image of my brother Dave, Chris, Gio, Joey, and other young men who carried
Ben’s casket through the cemetery. These
were young men—but to me, they were also young boys that I had watched grow up
through their high school and college years.
I suddenly felt guilty for rolling my eyes in the past at their
teenage-guy jokes and eating habits; I suddenly understood that at the time, I
had failed to recognize how special and important their friendship was.
As I watched them carry the casket, I
kept thinking, These guys should have
been Ben’s groomsmen, not his pallbearers.
The sight was impossible to process.
Absolutely impossible. Whenever I
think of that memory, I feel the stab of “the sharp knife of a short life” all
over again.
But then in
the pain that I feel for Ben’s family and friends, I can see a redeeming light
even in that impossible scene at the cemetery.
The young men who carried Ben’s casket had all been touched by Ben’s
sacrificial love. They had all been made
stronger by Ben’s encouragement. They
had all been blessed because of the fun Ben included them in.
It’s easy
to focus on what these young men lost because Ben’s life ended too
quickly. But I like to think now of the
rare gift these young men had through their friendship with Ben. Because of Ben, they had the opportunity to
experience a level of friendship that most people have never had. Because of Ben, they can now offer friendship
to others on the same level that Ben gave to them.
Ben’s death
helped me to face the reality that life is short, life is fragile, and that
today is the day to love well. Today is
the day to be devoted to one another in love and to honor others (Romans
12:10). Today is the day to remember
Ben’s example. Today is the day to love
well.
So as a big
sister, that’s my prayer for my little brother—that he would not only focus on
the hope of seeing Ben again in heaven, but also that he would love well and
consider others’ needs above his own.
From all of
us, I want Ben to know… Ben, it’s been a year now that you haven’t been
with us, and we miss you like crazy! I
imagine you in heaven, playing the piano, smiling big, and enjoying
feasts. Thank you for teaching us so
much about friendship!
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| Chris, Dave, & Ben... Ben's shirt says "Jesus Christ." So cool to think that Ben is with Jesus now because of his faith in Christ. "For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son that whoever believes in Him will not perish but have everlasting life." (John 3:!6) |
