On Monsters We Wrestle

I was riding bikes with everyone when we found out Steve Irwin died, or maybe we learned of the sudden reality shortly before we all left our houses to meet up. We all talked about it, not explicitly what he meant to us, but the things we remembered and how it made us sad.

Now Bobby isn’t here anymore.

He was there on the bike ride, and I can be there too if I close my eyes. I see us rounding the bend recalling alligators and crocodiles, or was it a caiman… what’s a caiman anyway? Something about the teeth or the snout, Gaven reminded us and we all agreed.

Bobby died in a car crash, also coming around a bend.

The news of that years later felt like its own stinger in my chest and if I learned anything from Steve Irwin it’s that you shouldn’t pull it out, so maybe that’s been in me the whole time and maybe if I let it out it’s actually worse or maybe a hole can’t really heal unless the object that created it is gone from the impalement.

Last I heard Bobby had been trying to get his life together after doing a stint behind bars, only for a tree to take him home. He would have been 30 years old six days ago. I can’t even remember the last time I thought of Devin or his younger brother Ethan, before writing this, but they were there too, on those bikes that felt like planes to us.

When I think of this moment, those people, I feel no different than my dad yelling from the other room “come here, come here, watch this!” as I sit in awe of a man on the back of an alligator, making it submit to him.

Now I’m here, calling you into the room to feel comfort in the collective “wow” when you see the monsters I wrestle with.