Editors Note: Joey Forcherio, a senior at Christian Brothers High School in Memphis, TN, wrote this letter to a classmate he had never met who was one of two students recently killed in a tragic automobile accident. I wrote a column about the two young men who lost their lives and how their parents and classmates must deal with their passing and others have written powerful testimonies to their lives. I believe Joey’s letter speaks volumes from classmates who were touched by their deaths. His writing is beautiful and the manner in which he exposes his emotions is powerful.
Dear Colin,
I don’t remember ever talking to you before. We never played on a team together. We never had a class together. I am not even sure if you knew my name. That is what is so confounding to me about my mourning; we never met, but yet I am deeply, penetratingly hurt by your death.
That is what CBHS does to its students. It takes young naïve boys and unexplainably intertwines them into brothers. When your brothers hurt, you hurt; when your brothers rejoice, you rejoice.
At no point in my life have I or will I ever have the same type of brotherhood as what I have been blessed enough to have cherished for four years. From the outside, people would call us strangers. From the inside, you are my brother.
“He who dies with me on this battlefield today shall be my brother.” Shakespeare
You brother beyond life,
Joey Forcherio
Class of 2015, CK2
