Thanks, Cade. The Comptons miss you

Sometimes the best help an adult can get is from a child.

When I returned to Alaska in October 2007, I came ahead of the rest of the family. Well, most of the family anyway. I brought my son, Austin, up with me for reasons best left for another discussion. I felt horrible. Austin was used to all his siblings and had already started school in Washington and here I was, bringing him up to a new and unfamiliar home and sending him to a new school where he wouldn’t know anybody. Where we came from, being the “new kid” was always tough.

So it was with much apprehension that I waited for Austin to return home from his first day of school.

“How did it go?” I immediately asked.

“Great, Dad!” he replied. “All these kids are really, really nice!”

Well, wow. How about that? “So you made some friends then?” I continued.

And indeed he had, right there on day one at Butte Elementary. One boy in particular had welcomed him, showed him around the school, stuck with him at recess and they had become instant best friends. From that day forward, Cade was Austin’s No. 1 friend. I don’t think he ever really knew just what he had done for this worried old dad. But thanks to him, I was able to put Austin on the bus for day No. 2 with no fear, concern or anxiety. Whew!

As time went by at Butte Elementary, weekends would see Austin either going to Cade’s house or Cade coming to ours. He was kind of quiet, but whenever I think of Cade, the image that instantly comes to mind is the little blond-haired boy with that goofy grin he seemed to sprout every few minutes. Seems he and Austin always had some sort of joke going. Cade certainly wasn’t Austin’s only friend, even if he remained his best. And when the rest of the family joined Austin and I up here in Alaska in December, all our other children made friends too. But in all honesty, out of all our children’s friends, Cade was our favorite. The kid was just so mellow, laid back, easy to please, had great manners and was polite. He was just the epitome of a “good kid.”

Glenny and I have six children and Cade came from a big family as well. So it was easy for him to spend time in our crazy, packed house. He came over for Austin, but just as easily interacted with Justin, Portia and little Benjy. Heck, even our hard-nosed oldest son AJ liked Cade (and he rarely liked any of his younger sibling’s friends).

The years went by and soon Cade and Austin were at PJMS. Things got a little tougher there. Cade, the laid-back boy who shied away from trouble, found himself the target of bullies. At one point he found himself cornered by a group of them, unable to walk away. Austin, who likewise isn’t one for conflict, tried to help Cade walk away from the situation when one of the bullies jumped them from behind and got a broken nose for his effort. To this day that remains Austin’s only school fight and the fact that he was willing to go that far for his friend Cade came as no surprise to me. (I’m not one for fighting in school, but I gave Austin a pass on that one).

Cade ended up being home-schooled while Austin remained at PJMS. This is the part of the story where you usually see the friendship kinda fade away, but nope! Cade and Austin remained the very best of friends and continued to hang out. I remember when, even though Cade no longer attended PJMS and wasn’t a wrestler, he still marched alongside Austin in the parade to support the wrestling team, he was just that kind of boy.

Flash forward a few more years and Austin was now attending Wasilla High School even farther away from Cade’s home out in the Butte. But, yes, they were still best friends. By now they looked like brothers; two very tall, handsome blond boys. Wasn’t that long ago that Cade stopped by the house to borrow Austin’s snowboard and I just couldn’t help but stare at him. The 6-foot-something young man with a deep voice standing in my living room (smiling and laughing like always) didn’t fit with the image in my head of this short little boy with the goofy grin. I made a joke or two myself, asked him how he was doing and all that before he left with the snowboard. That was the last time I saw him.

Glenny and some of my children ran into Cade just a couple weeks ago at Fred Meyer. Portia walked around the store with Cade and cracked a joke at some Valentine’s Day candy that said “The Perfect Man!” with some picture of a big, buff dude on it. Portia laughed and said, “Cade! Here, this is you!” And, the great boy that he was, Cade laughed too. That was the last time they saw him.

We received the sad, shocking news last week that Cade was no longer with us. We’re still struggling to come to terms with that, to grasp the reality of it. I don’t know how long it’s going to take to sink in that he’s truly gone. But sometime during the last week as my thoughts kept bouncing back to Cade — while driving, sitting at my desk at work, looking at my own children — I keep coming back to that first day in 2007 when a nervous, apprehensive and guilt-wracked father took his son to his new school. I still remember the knots in my stomach as I left him there, in a new city thousands of miles away from where he was used to, in a brand new school where he knew nobody, where he was “the new kid.” And how absolutely grateful I still am that a little boy named Cade approached my son, welcomed him and gave Austin the best friend he’s ever had.

Thanks, Cade. The Comptons miss you.

Ben Compton is a Palmer resident and publishes his column as “Compton’s Corner,” the same title used by his grandmother, Phyllis Compton, a longtime Frontiersman columnist. Contact him at bcompton1971@yahoo.com.