Christopher Rush

At the end of the 2006-2007 school year, on the final day of school in fact, I knew it was time to have a little talk with Brian Mouring.  I told him briefly and quietly, simply giving him something to think about for the summer: in sum, I told him that he was one of the more important students in the school during its present incarnation.  Not only did he have a fair amount of influence in his own class (though most of them would still deny it to this day), but his actions and attitudes were noticed and reflected by his brothers, who in turn affected their own classes (and still do to this day).  He took that encouragement about his own importance and influence to heart, to a certain degree, and we can see that influence now.  Believe it or not, Brian Mouring was an important part of Summit Christian Academy, on and off the soccer field.

I do not pretend that I know “the real” Brian Mouring — true, I spent more time with him than most, and we spent much of his Europe trip together (when he wasn’t off exploring with Bradley), and I probably had a higher opinion of him than most while he was here, but I got only the Brian Mouring he wanted me to see.  And that is fine with me.  I was asked earlier this year why I had such a high opinion of him, and I’ve always made it clear that Brian was one of those guys that if you treated him the way God treats him, if you considered him the way God viewed him, he would eventually become the man God wanted him to be, and Mr. Mouring indicated at Brian’s service that he was on the road to achieving that — perhaps he had, in fact, achieved it as much as he needed to.

The most interesting part of Brian’s service, to me, was Mr. Mouring’s list of dangerous, life-threatening activities that had happened to Brian (or in which he actively participated) in the recent years.  My wife made the point after the service about how that was a remarkable example of God’s grace and love, not just for Brian but all of us.  Think of it accurately: it’s not that God took Brian “too soon,” but that God miraculously kept Brian alive long enough for him to become, truly, a born-again Christian.  That is a quintessential example of the love of God if I have ever seen one.  As Mr. Mouring said, we all daily perform “routine” acts that are far more dangerous than what Brian was doing the day he died.  It was, in truth, a demonstration of the love of God.

The title of this tribute indicates that this is my personal reflections on the influence of Brian Mouring in the brief time I knew him; thus, if my recollections so far and continuing are discordant with your impressions of the Brian you knew, that’s okay with me, and hopefully it’s okay with you.  The “Alpha Leader” designation refers to perhaps the highlight of my time with Brian, the Senior Europe trip in the spring of 2009.  I don’t want this to turn in to an advertisement for going on the trip, so the fact that experience is the highlight of our three+ years together is merely coincidental.  On that trip, for a variety of reasons we shan’t go into here, no one else really wanted to hang out with Brian, Bryan, or myself, which was perfectly fine with us, since that gave us the freedom to do what we (i.e., I) wanted to do during free time without having to acquiesce to anyone else’s desires.  That was rather enjoyable, especially when it came time to divide the entire group.  All we’d have to do is call out “Alpha Team,” and we’d gather up and move out to whatever secret things we’d want to see in Rome, Florence, or Paris.  Good times.  True, they didn’t always want to go see what I wanted to see, and Alpha Team broke up once in awhile, but being intelligent men we never took it personally or lost any emotional energy about having our feelings hurt.  Brian was good like that.

During the trip, when the tour guide asked many questions on the bus while we were travelling from place to place, only Brian and Bryan were willing to answer any question — not because I was sitting close to them on the bus, but because they took it upon themselves to simultaneously bring enjoyment to the moment (one of their main purposes in life) and do what was expected of them in that situation (one of their most underrated characteristics).  Don’t misunderstand me — I’m not here to harangue the non-Bri/yan population of the class of 2009; all I’m saying is that while on the Europe trip, they behaved themselves far better than the rest of their classmates, which most people (who knew them even less accurately than I did) would not have believed before, during, or after the trip.

I acknowledge that this is becoming somewhat commonplace, but as soon as Mrs. Lane came into our in-service meeting the morning of August 18 and announced that Brian was missing, I knew on some non-cognitive (perhaps non-rational) level that Brian was gone.  Like the rest of you, I did hold out some hope that he would be found alive out to sea shortly thereafter, but it was not very real.  I had no sense of desperation or despair; in fact I was rather calm about the whole thing, which was in part why I didn’t go to any of the prayer services — I suspected that people would have wanted to see me grieving and mourning, but I wasn’t in that place yet, so I didn’t go.  That probably sounds a great deal more selfish than I meant it, so I hope you didn’t take that the wrong way.  I had heard from various sources earlier in the summer that Brian had become a born-again Christian, so I knew he was much better off than the rest of us, so the sorrow I felt was for his family (and still is).  Shortly thereafter, my equanimity was replaced with anger.  Not anger at God — don’t be ridiculous; anger at the many people who, to be frank, didn’t like/know Brian when he was here and suddenly were acting like they had lost a valued friend and colleague.  Also, the preposterous reactions of various people (mostly through Facebook statuses) about how “life is too short, so we need to squeeze all the happiness out of life while we can,” people who had pretended to believe the Biblical declarations of life and its purpose but now, facing genuine loss and tragedy for the first time, had apparently reverted into hedonists with no eternal perspective.  I spent most of the next couple of weeks being angry.  I didn’t really grieve until we started singing “It is Well With My Soul” during Brian’s memorial service.  With Mr. Mouring’s words and that song (to be honest, I really didn’t listen to whatever Pastor Brian said), I was able to release my anger and finally grieve the temporary loss of Brian and resume the love I had for Brian and even the people who didn’t like him very much the way I should love them — and I’m fairly certain Brian would have wanted that as well.

I wouldn’t want to end on such an emotionally charged note — this is Brian, after all: the guy who painted his chest blue to show his support for a school he only recently started attending, who performed the role of the Mermaid of Christmas Cheer, and who stuck with Babylon 5 to the end.  I don’t want to tell you how you should best remember Brian; you can figure that out in your own way — though C.S. Lewis reminds us in A Grief Observed that the sooner you stop trying so hard to remember him, the better (sharper, more accurate) your memory of him will become.  Instead, let me tell you some of the ways by which I remember him.

During one of those bizarre “all the Drama kids have to take four class periods off each day to finally decide to get ready for their performance” days we used to have a couple of years ago, I found myself in my room with Brian and Bryan and not much to do — they had long since given their senior theses, no final exams for which to study, and not much point in having class considering they were the only ones around.  Thus, they decided to do what any sensible students would do in such a situation: borrow one of the games PCC left sitting around and play it; in this case, Guess Who?.  If you never had the pleasure of watching Brian and Bryan play Guess Who?, you’ve missed out.  It gets rather intense and impressively mature: not the usual sorts of questions more younger players would likely ask when trying to identify which person one’s opponent had.

One of Brian’s (and Bryan’s) main attributes was believing that he had absolute comprehension of the layout of a city, regardless if the time spent in that city did not exceed an hour and a half.  Such was the case when Alpha Team and a couple other friends went to some of the secret places of Florence, Italy.  Despite the fact I knew Florence’s layout rather well, Brian and Bryan knew they could lead us directly from Santa Croce back to our hostel in plenty of time for refreshment before the evening all-group gathering for dinner.  With the rallying cry of “I got this!” echoing in the streets upon which Michelangelo and Dante trod, Brian and Bryan led us around the town.  Literally, around the town.  Three times.  After twenty minutes of walking, we spied once again the unmistakable outline of Santa Croce.  “We’re back where we started, guys.”  “I got this!”  Another half hour of walking, through the outer city gates, back through the outer city gates, and finally the unmistakable outline of Santa Croce.  “Brian, we’re back at Santa Croce.”  “I got this!”  Somehow, Da Gama and Magellan lead us back to the hostel just in time to not go in pretty much but to go straight to the meeting place for dinner, which may explain some of the Facebook photos you may have seen of Brian and Bryan lying on the Florentine grass on a late afternoon — exhausted because their hubris and my munificent willingness to let them fail resulted in a circuitous trek around the Cradle of the Renaissance.  I knew even then it was worth it.

To date I have only seen the regenerate Brian Mouring once, at my birthday party this past June.  I know with utmost certainty he knows how I felt about him, which is in part, I believe, why we got along so well.  When he needed to leave, we said our typical goodbyes in the living room, though I was standing in the entranceway of our home by the time he got around to actually going.  I watched Brian walk out the door but for some inexplicable reason, I had the urge to say goodbye to him one last time, so I opened the door and waved goodbye again.  Brian gave me a quintessential Brian look of “Dude, what?” with his quintessential Brian smile, and he waved goodbye and left, nodding as if to say “I’ll see you later, don’t worry.”  I know I will see him again soon enough, in a place where no shadows fall, as has so often been said.  I’ll think of him whenever I watch NewsRadio, mention “usurpation” as the theme of The Tempest, or eat a tasty cheeseburger — and these experiences will be even better because of these memories.  And I know, in the words of that gospel song:

In a little while

Surely you’ll be mine

In a little while … I’ll be there.

In a little while

This hurt will hurt no more

I’ll be home, love.

Goodbye, my friend.  I will see you soon.