Yesterday I received some very sad news. One of my classmates, Sri Vempati, died in a car accident this past weekend.

He was a fellow Biochemistry major and pre-med. He was a brilliant student – a triple major, who somehow managed to carry a near double-load of classes.

The last time I had a real conversation with him, I was sitting in the foyer of Sid Rich (the main science building), and he noted I was always sitting there studying. I was eating lunch, and responded that actually, on this occasion, I was not studying, but reading the New York Times, which wasn’t very interesting that day.  We joked around a bit, and talked about our upcoming finals, our classes for next semester. Then it was off to the last session of lab – he often tried to get a rise out of me, and we would occasionally get into a heated debate about the value of certain virtues (or the existence of such at all). Mostly, he enjoyed his success at getting a rise out of me, and I steamed and stomped and rolled my eyes. He just laughed. He was always smiling, sometimes a bit of a devilish smile, but so all the same.

He sat in front of me in Cell Bio, and was the person who always asked the “so what if this went wrong?” or “so how does that happen?” question, which to fully explain would take quite some time. In Organic Chemistry, he often questioned the reactions, and pointed out every place that things didn’t make perfect sense. Einstein would have been proud, as Sri was a great follower of “the important thing is not to stop questioning.” For thus he did. He wanted an explanation, and had the brain to see through any loopholes in it. His was the most curious type of intellect.

He was energetic, too. A few weeks ago, I saw him at the Student Research Symposium, dressed in slacks and a tie, gesticulating with great air as he described his research poster, which depicted a chemical reaction. Other times, I was shooed away from his post at the Computer Information desk in the library, by his supervisor, who was not okay with me standing there while he talked about a chemical spectra.

This is a great loss for his family, his friends, for TCU, and for whoever would have come his way in the future.

I wrote about the human response to loss last July. I said that we react in different ways, and that sometimes, we cannot feel or react at all. If there is one occurrence in life that humans are particularly ill-equipped to deal with, it is the passing of someone very young. Someone with potential, who had all sorts of things ahead of them. We hardly know what to say, what to do, and we feel that such a thing is tremendously difficult. One could say that when someone dies young, the natural procession and cycle of life is aberrant. When things happen so out of order or at the wrong time, it does not compute right, it isn’t right. It is a tragedy.

The end of life is both an unknown quantity and is irreversible. Humans have a hard time grappling with both of those. As children, we are scared of the dark. I remember sobbing uncontrollably when, at the age of four or so, a helium-filled balloon I had been given at the Meals and Wheels office floated away into a light blue southern California sky. The fact that it would not come back, and nothing I could do could change that, was a shock. When someone leaves forever, it is a shock, and we do not know where they are. They are lost. And we will make our own journey thence before they are found.

I put forth my most sincere condolences to Sri’s family, and his other friends and peers at TCU. The chancellor stated in the official TCU email regarding this tragedy that “we are all diminished by a loss like this.” I agree. I don’t like to say it, as he was so full of life, and energy, and took everything on full force, approaching life with what can only be described as gusto, but…rest in peace, Sri.