Hundreds attended the two-hour long service at Damien High School in La Verne, Calif., to lay to rest Tyler Hilinski, 21, who took his life earlier this month.
LA VERNE, Calif. — Beneath the San Gabriel Mountains, in an unmistakable American gymnasium, with the bleachers brightly green and yellow, the basketball hoops folded up familiarly toward the ceiling, and the hanging banners telling of bygone happy championships, there gathered Saturday about 800 human hearts in many states of brokenness.
They heard a high school quarterback recite W.H. Auden’s poem “Funeral Blues,” beginning with, “Stop all the clocks/Cut off the telephone,” concluding with, “For nothing now can ever come to any good,” and in the middle, the voice breaking slightly while saying, “He is dead.