In Memory

When I woke up Saturday morning, my Twitter timeline was dotted with missing posters for a 19 year old kid in Ann Arbor who no one had seen since 1 am on Friday. His name was Lucas Mattson and he was an engineering student at the University of Michigan, last spotted on the 1700 block of Hill Street, where the frat houses clustered.

At 9 am CT Saturday morning, Alex Pretti was shot and killed by border patrol agents near the intersection of 26th Street and Nicollet Avenue in Minneapolis.

Two hours later and 650 miles away, Lucas Mattson’s body was found frozen at the 1900 block of Cambridge Road, just around the corner from where he was last seen walking in a t-shirt and jeans. “Oh god michigan kid missing after walking home from party last night on hill street and just found frozen body,” my friend texts me. I swallow the lump in my throat.

I’m sure in the coming days, more will be revealed about Lucas. For now, I search his name on Instagram and he pops up third. “Junea, AK Umich ‘28” his bio reads. A profile picture of him in a suit, standing in front of what I assume to be Mendenhall Lake in Juneau.

At this point, we know much more about Alex Pretti than we do about Lucas. That he was 37 – 18 years Lucas’s senior and still far too young to die. That he was an ICU nurse at the VA in Minneapolis. That he worked as a research scientist before going back to school at the University of Minnesota for nursing. That he was a lawful gun owner. That he loved mountain biking and his dog.

Lucas’s Instagram is private. More details of his life won’t be revealed until – and if – his family and friends come forward with their memorials. The obituary in the Michigan Daily. The webpage for online tributes in his name.

The circumstances of these two deaths are vastly different. One was brutally murdered – shot in the back by federal agents as he tried to defend two civilians at an anti-ICE protest. Another was taken by the bitter cold, walking home from a party. No jacket on, which is typical of men I’ve met in the midwest. Probably of men in Alaska, too. The friend who texted me about Lucas says her husband told her it happened all the time in Wisconsin, where he’s originally from. Her husband, she says, “used to walk in freezing temps drunk home from downtown out to 7th street and Huron [in Ann Arbor] without a coat.” I tell her about the men in my life who’d do the same.

These lives and deaths are technically totally unrelated, but they’re now connected in time. I wonder, astrologically, what it means to be taken out at the same time. Is it similar to being born at the same time, in the same place? Is there such a thing as a death chart? I google. Yes. There is. What does it mean that these two young men died so close together – so prominently on the internet (my internet, at least) – both in the midwest, both in the freezing cold?

On Saturday January 24th – when Alex Pretti was shot, when Lucas Mattson’s body was found – the sun was in Aquarius and moon was in Aries. Sun in Aquarius means a time for reimagining existing structures. Some sliver of hope that Pretti’s death was not entirely in vain. That he might inspire a movement that effects real change under this brutal, murderous administration. Moon in Aries brings assertive, emotionally direct, sometimes impulsive energy. We’re being called into action. To not be passive in the face of violence.

I’m not sure whether or not I fully believe in these death charts, but I know the overwhelming feeling of public loss – of grief from afar – and I have to imagine I’m not the only one who looked at the tragic loss of these two young men and felt they were somehow linked. Hoped they were somewhere, together.

Often, when I cross the street, I imagine getting hit by a car and dying. It’s not a death wish by any means – I certainly don’t want it to happen – but it’s a compulsive and maybe vaguely narcissistic thought that crosses my mind. What’s in my hands, what’s in my bag, where am I headed, in what state did I leave my apartment? What narrative would be constructed in the wake of my death around what exactly was happening, who exactly I was, at that moment in time?

I wonder, for Lucas, what party he’d just been to. Who he was drinking with. What he hoped might happen that night. What actually did. My curiosity feels relatively sated around the details of his death – though cause has yet to be formally announced – but I want details around his life. Wish his Instagram were public. Wonder who he was dating, what he did for fun, where he lived on campus, whether he was liking Michigan, whether he missed Alaska. I’ll search for his obituary in the coming days, and perhaps these details will come to the fore. I just want so badly for him to be remembered. Hurt for his family. 19 years old is unfathomably young to die.

At the height of their early grief, Alex Pretti’s parents put out a statement regarding his death. “Alex wanted to make a difference in this world. Unfortunately he will not be with us to see his impact.”

The midwest was ferociously cold this weekend. The low in Minneapolis on Saturday when Alex Pretti went out to protest was negative fifteen. The metaphor feels obvious, and in fact, ceases to be a metaphor at all, as it was cold enough to kill a young man in Ann Arbor on Friday night.

We’re living in brutal times. These deaths are clearly tragedies in their own rites – one a political wakeup call, another a senseless end to a young life that was only just beginning. Pretti’s parents write of his no longer being able to see his impact on the world. Neither is Lucas. He died a savage death – pure potential – at the very beginning of his adult life.

Whether or not you agree that there exists a cosmic tie between these two lives and deaths, I know you’ll remember this weekend. The bitter, bitter cold. The senseless loss. Life, for the rest of us, goes on, but I’ll try to remember both these young men. Where they were, who they were, where they were headed, and what they might’ve done, had they been given the chance.