Jonathan's Death

"Jonathan Stewart, a prominent attorney passed away yesterday. The cause of death was determined to be suicide. He is survived by his parents, Mr. and Mrs. Mark Stewart, his brother, Rodney Stewart, and his partner, Josh McKress."

It's interesting how you get so caught up in the misery of your own life that you begin to think that everyone else is living the perfect life that you happen to be missing out on. It was like everyone else was part of a sorority that I wasn't privileged to join or that they lived their lives on some happier more deserving plane.

I felt that way about Jonathan. I was jealous of his groups of friends, his confidence and the way he always looked everyone in the eye. I judged in contempt his school spirit because, of course, being so misunderstood and miserable, I couldn’t possibly have any. I envied the way he used to be able to talk to absolutely everyone and make them laugh. I hated how professors always called on him and praised him. I thought it was unfair how he partied so hard and always beat my semester GPA. I thought, what a jock, always wearing that football jersey like it was something important. I resented the adoration that the fans gave him, the quarterback. When he won student body president senior year at Notre Dame, I thought, how typical, why wouldn’t the perfect boy bred from a trust fund family in Greenwich CT, star quarterback, summa cum laude student with probably a law career in his future not be student body president? Some people just have all the luck, dealt all the right cards.

Jonathan never spoke more than a few words to me all four years we went to school together. A few years back I heard that he had moved to L.A. and was representing some major motion picture company as their corporate lawyer. So predicable, I thought, of course he would be a success. I was struggling through a divorce, working towards my masters in social work and still paying off my Notre Dame student loans.

Then a letter came in the mail inviting me to a memorial service to mourn the loss of Jonathan. Notre Dame sent the letter to all alum of that graduating year. Jonathan was a major patron to the university.

All that time I was coveting his life and his successes, he was just the same as me struggling through life searching for happiness and understanding. Appearances can be so deceiving. I yearned for the happiness that I believed he felt, while all the time we had more in common than I would ever have known.