Too Young To Die

(From the Janesville Messenger, 6-29-08)

Twenty-four years old is too young to die.

You hear about the murders of young people, and you think that it could never happen within your family, not even within your extended family.

But that’s what happened. The son of my wife’s cousin – technically, her first cousin, once removed – was stabbed in the heart after a “verbal altercation” at a party in Chicago. A suspect has been arrested, a guy with an alleged reputation for cutting himself and others with knives, if the blog entries I read about the case are to be believed. Other hearsay suggests that the murder suspect held a grudge from an earlier incident where he crashed the cousin’s party and got so intoxicated that he went on a window-breaking spree that resulted in his arrest.

Regardless of the details, the only important fact is that a young man just starting to make his way in the world was brutally and senselessly robbed of his life.

Although we see his parents and grandmother occasionally at family events, I couldn’t tell you the last time we had seen him. I mainly remember him as a little tow-headed kid running around at family reunions. I recall at one such reunion, he and his sisters were a little bored and I entertained them by playing softball with them.

From what I gathered at the memorial service in his hometown of Madison, it sounded like he had gone through a bit of a “wild” period when he was younger but had found his niche and was a very happy young man.

He had graduated recently from the Illinois Institute of Art and was working as a graphic artist at a marketing firm. After his death, his family was surprised to learn that he was a celebrity in Chicago’s “street art” community, going by the moniker of “SOLVE.”

How is “street art” different than graffiti? Some people would say there is no difference. I would say that the main difference is that graffitists aim to deface public property, where street artists aim to beautify it or at the very least, make it more interesting. SOLVE would take an ugly rusty electric box and turn it into a green and pink polka-dotted wonder. Or, in one stunt that got plenty of attention, he adorned the seat of an el train with a real TV set that had “We are experiencing legal difficulties” on its screen. He employed stickers, stencils and a variety of other methods and materials. No matter what you thought of the concept, you had to admit the kid was both talented and clever. This was no gang-banger with spray paint. Although as one friend said at the funeral, “I would tell him, ‘It’s still illegal even if you don’t think it should be.’”

I had never been to the funeral of a murder victim before. The reverend who presided was a friend of the family, and his message was the right one – that anger toward SOLVE’s assailant would not bring him back.

He was eulogized by speakers representing the various parts of his life – his family, his Madison neighbors, his Chicago friends. The funeral home took down their art to allow his work to be displayed on their walls. A large number of his friends from Chicago made the trek to Madison, many of them wearing t-shirts or temporary tattoos displaying the SOLVE logo and some of his other oft-used icons. The leader of the band in which SOLVE played drums performed a couple of songs. The place was so packed that there wasn’t enough room for everyone.

His family made it clear that they intended the day to be a celebration of his life, not a mourning of his death. But the truth was still inescapable, and it was hard for me not to walk away thinking this was the saddest funeral I had ever attended.

There was a meal after the funeral, at a place called the Wil-Mar Neighborhood Center. It calls itself “A Place for all People” and hosts a variety of inclusive programs and events. As I approached the door of the center, I noticed that the outside of the building was covered with a huge, beautiful mural.

I couldn’t help thinking that SOLVE would have approved.