On Friendship and Justin Jay
I’ve just returned home from a memorial weekend in San Diego for a dear friend from my law school days. He died very unexpectedly at the age of 33 from bacterial meningitis. Since hearing of his death I’ve been thinking of a lot of things, among them the strange nature of friendship. There are some friendships that seemed destined for forever but the relationship ends—sometimes as abruptly as the shutting of a door, sometimes almost invisibly—and while you may always wish the best for these old friends, in the end the impact they made on your heart just isn’t what you thought it would be. Then there is the other category, the friends who leave their mark on you. The ones who become a part of you. You can hear their distinctive laughter or speech patterns like a stream running through your mind. Justin Jay was that kind of friend for me. For several years of the intensity that was law school, Justin Jay was one of my closest friends. In the years that followed I knew without question that when I needed Justin, he was just a phone call away.
We were lucky because our graduating class was not at all the toxic gathering of hyper-competitors that you hear about at most law schools (it wasn’t exactly something out of One L). By the even raucus standard of law school in the US, our class was a pretty historic group of revelers. There were dozens of people who on any given night, I could be sharing a drink with. Costumes were an essential ingredient to the magic, and we even had our own “party block” where two groups of students had rented houses across the street, eventually rigging up a seemingly endless supply of beer through a kegerater.
The first time I laid eyes on Justin Jay, he was napping in the seat beside me during Civil Procedure. I thought this a bit odd—I wondered “How can he not take this more seriously?” The answer is that while there could never be any question that Justin was brilliant, or that he cared about politics and history and injustice, he was never meant to be a lawyer (something many of us would eventually conclude—inlcuding me). The things that really held Justin’s attention were music and friends. After law school he moved to San Diego and decided it was time to start his musical career as a drummer in earnest. By all accounts he was succeeding.
By all accounts, Justin continued to be a rock star at friendship, too. According to his mother and sister, person after person approached them in tears this weekend to say that Justin had been their best friend. Could any of us ask more from life?
Justin’s uncle (appropriately dressed for our costumed event as Michael Jackson) led an informal ritual outside the last stop on our memorial bar crawl. He asked us to think about what we will take from Justin’s life, what part of the relationship we had with him would we carry with us forever. Justin and I always shared an irreverant love of the absurd. Every time I put on a fake mustache, Justin will be there with me. But more than that, I hope to cultivate what I think made Justin such a good friend: his ability to acknowledge the faults in the people he loved, but to love them no less for it. Justin was always the first person to tell me, “Yeah, you need to cut that shit out.” I’d nod in agreement, we’d laugh over the stupidity in question, and we’d go and get another drink. To call a person out like that requires humor, but also tenderness—and Justin was nothing if not a gentle, loving heart.
Justin, you lovable, wild, super-nerd, I love you. Thank you for all the laughs, for the soul-deep conversations, and for bringing two remakable women into my life—you’re mother and sister—whose love for you epitomizes grace and dignity. For all of you who loved Justin, thank you for making his life something legendary.
