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Christopher

Noxon

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Dear Charlie,

Eulogy for Charlie Noxon, 9/10/1999- 12/31/2019

Dear Charlie,

When you were little and in a snit - upset or wiggly or whatever - we had a trick: we’d look in your face and tell you a story.

It could be about anything, really. I used to make up crazy stories for you about a made-up race of creatures called the Wallawalladoodads. They had alien bodies and drank grape soda and they always shared their toys. Remember?

The point is, the minute we looked in your face and started talking, no matter how upset you felt, you’d get this intense narcotic look, and just lock in and listen.

Right now I want to tell you another story. It’s really sad - but I promise, it’s really good.

Today we put you in the underground, where we all began, and where we’re all going… dust to dust, all that. So much happens down there that scientists barely understand. Microbes move, nutrients fertilize and roots from different trees pleach together and communicate. Down there life and death are forever mixing, mutating and expanding.

And today you’re going down there, going on adventure. Don’t be worried.

As I say this stuff about nutrients and microbes I can feel you stirring, needing to say something. Your dad’s getting all woo woo and weird and vaguely mystical. You need to tell me about how you just read something about soil ecosystems and you disagree. You’ve got a study to cite and an article from the Economist to call up on your shitty old iPhone that proves you’re right.

And of course Charlie - you’re right - you’re pretty much always right. You lapped me on smarts (and height and handsomeness) years and years ago.

Oscar’s 14 and he just did the same thing. It’s killing me.

It’s not, I’m joking. Of course you know we’ll never stop being impressed by how much you know, how many books you’ve read, and opinions you’ve considered and languages you speak. It’s a pleasure to watch you speed across the vast network of data and knowledge you carry around in that big brain of yours.

Don’t think we’ll ever stop finding ways to tell people that our son missed one question on the SAT - and that was only because he left that question blank and he was pissed about it.

But I need to say that’s not what we really love about you Charlie. There’s so much else.

It’s all the stuff that makes you so kind and sweet and soulful. It’s what you wrote in your Dvar Torah about the spiritual value of apology and how God in the Torah has to answer for his mistakes—TELL ME ABOUT IT.

This week I’ve been thinking to honor Charlie we should all get into the streets to demand impeachment - of God. Talk about high crimes and misdemeanors.

Anyway. What we love is how you chase down random dogs on the street to give them pets. It’s how on Halloween in freshman year at Columbia… you dressed up as Ignatius T. Reilly from Confederacy of Dunces… and didn’t mind all that much that zero-point-zero-one percent of your classmates had any idea who you were. It’s how you and Eliza laugh and razz and love one another, no matter where you are.

It’s how you’re always the first guy at a family gathering to connect with a little kid. 

You’ve also struggled a lot, I know. It’s just not easy being Charlie Noxon. You’ve had a hard time socially, and with girls and rejection and authority. You have strong opinions and a little bit of a fascist streak. You’ve wrestled with deep existential loneliness and thought a lot about whether this is even a world you want to live in.

But just look. Look how you grew. Look at how you came into yourself. Look at how over the past year or so you found such poise and confidence and happiness.

This is why YOU being the person of ALL people who died on a mountain far from home on New Year’s Eve can be something more than a tragedy. It is SO hard to see any pattern or sense in this at all… but even in this horrific week I can see the beautiful arc of your life.

What I mean is that lives are as long as they are. And yours is - WAS - too fucking short.

But just look at how you grew, look at all the incredible people who adore you, look at the communities you touched and changed and brought life to. Look at how over the past three months you found intimacy and connection and the first gorgeous, intense phases of love.

Of course we’ll never stop wishing we could know what you’d go on to do from here - the discoveries and things you’d make, your career and family and all the rest of it. Thinking about that absolutely breaks all our hearts.

But look again at that beautiful arc. Look at the sweet, lonely, pained kid in the newsie cap - and how he grew into that beautiful man, who just a few days ago was shushing down a hill with his brother and sister and me, feeling good, riding so high, on the cusp of a new year and a big life.

It’s a good story Charlie. And we all know you love a good story.

I love you Charlie. And I always will.

Love,
Dad