A Tragic Loss
RIP Kwentyn Wiggins 2002–2019
My son Charlie lost his best friend Kwentyn late last Sunday night. Kwentyn was driving back from Sonoma when his car veered into a tree, flipped and burst into flames. Here is the full story from the Marin IJ, because somehow that makes it more real than the unreal I feel typing this almost a week after it happened.
Charlie and Kwentyn just finished their Junior years at Branson. On the football field together for three years, they became co-captains and MVPs. They were poised to win their conference again this Fall. Charlie anchored the defense as the Safety and Linebacker who loved to tackle; Kwentyn was the electric, sinewy QB with a laser arm and highlight-reel legs: High School Michael Vick.
I watched Kwentyn do things on the Football field that were just silly. He regularly escaped grasps with hesitation moves or Madden-like 360 degree spins. But no matter what he did, I always discounted it against the reality of how much better he was going to become next year, when he put on those 25 pounds and grew another couple of inches.
I have an archive of football clips, brief moments of video of exploits that will grow in legend even as his physical memory fades.
And he could play basketball. He was the starting point guard on the Branson team that won the MCAL championship. This year he finally integrated his raw physical instincts on the court with Coach Honick’s military-grade, swarming team defense. I saw him play in a dozen games over the past two years and he had that same promise I saw in his football performances: he accelerated and decelerated on a dime, his passing was crisp and he was not afraid to take chances. When the ball rotated from Victor to Peyton to Aidan to Will, Kwentyn was ready at any point to streak towards the basket with the ball for a contested layup. His outside shot would develop in the years to come, but that electric fast-twitch energy (think Rondo/Kobe) was something he was blessed with from the beginning.
A few years ago I put up a picture of Len Bias playing against Michael Jordan in Charlie’s room. I was 17 in 1986 when Len Bias died, only days after being drafted by my hometown Celtics. I will never forget that stunned feeling of loss, the heavy realization that his promise of future greatness would be unfulfilled.
I wanted Charlie to appreciate his own talent and to never take promise for granted, since it could all be gone in an instant. And then it was. But it wasn’t his promise, it was his best friend’s. The star athlete prodigy cut short by a tragic accident. We can relate to this. But as a Dad on Father’s Day, the loss of a son like Kwentyn is simply too hard to take. It is more than a story of talent lost. He burned bright and brilliantly, and infused his spirit and joy into the lives of all he touched. He opened up Charlie’s heart and engaged his empathy in ways that nobody else could. In recent months, Charlie could not stop talking about how lucky he was to have Kwentyn in his life, and how much he was looking forward to balling out next fall on the Football field, that nobody was gonna be able to touch them.
There is a scene in the Iliad that I vaguely remember from thirty years ago as a college Freshman. It is about the the overwhelming grief Achilles feels upon hearing of Patroclus’ death on the battle field:
A dark cloud of grief fell upon Achilles as he listened. He filled both hands with dust from off the ground, and poured it over his head, disfiguring his comely face, and letting the refuse settle over his shirt so fair and new. He flung himself down all huge and hugely at full length, and tore his hair with his hands.
Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, this is what becomes of us. We are all mortal. The mourning and wailing of Greek tragedy came to the privileged breezy sunshine of Marin and struck us speechless. Somewhere in this tangle of emotions-- grief, guilt, sadness, loss, emptiness-- is what it means to be human, is what it means to be a friend.
Father’s Day 2019. Sitting next to Charlie on the couch, playing NBA 2k, being present to his loss, being mindful of the even bigger loss a few miles away in the Wiggins house, struggling to make sense of this all. A world that moves ahead without our permission to do so: practices, classes, recruiting, Senior year and then college. With brothers and sisters and friends and teachers and parents behaving appropriately in these most inappropriate times.
The awkwardness of it all. The opening up to the larger pattern of connectedness, to a sense that this was all meant to be, combined with the responsibility that I need to steer my boys away from tragedies like this in the future. It becomes our job to parent. To be present and hold space for their confusion, struggles, ambitions, and secrets. To avoid triggering their shame, without avoiding difficult conversations.
Over Father’s day dinner, the Dads put Kwentyn’s accident in the context of others they had experienced in their pasts, of brothers and friends lost over the years. They said that the pain got worse over time, that there was no graceful “moving on” by the parents who would never be the same. We talked about how the 17 year-old boys we knew and loved last Sunday were now 17-year old men. That whatever life lessons we had tried to carefully prepare them for over time had now suddenly arrived all at once.
And while us dads broke bread at one end of the table and talked through this profoundly scary week, our boys told stories about their friend Kwentyn at the other end, connecting to each other and smiling, at least until they went their separate ways.
