To an outsider, it would at first seem that Paul and Teresa Davis were hosting an ordinary party. Old friends greeted each other with hugs and hellos. Young parents held babies with one hand and cups of beer or iced tea in the other as they chatted with acquaintances. Small children gleefully scampered around the room, giggling and shrieking as they played. Guests piled their plates high with macaroni and cheese, coleslaw, and hot chicken.
But upon looking closer, certain details revealed that this was an altogether different type of gathering. A framed red and purple rugby jersey graced one wall near the door. Near another wall there hung a quilt, the patches representing a variety of sports teams and extracurricular school activities. And on every table, there sat pictures of a brown-haired young man whose bright-eyed smile never seemed to fade. This was Raise Your Glass, a memorial celebration for the Davises’ youngest son Kevin, who had died in March 2012.
He was a junior at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, on spring break with his then-girlfriend Audrey. The pair took a cruise to Mexico and their ship stopped in Cozumel one day. They rented a moped to explore the city, with Kevin driving. Joyfully, they zipped and darted through the cobblestoned streets; until Kevin hit a pothole and the duo was thrown from the vehicle. Audrey survived, though she was badly injured. Kevin didn’t make it.
Paul was the first to hear of his son’s passing. He’s the principal of Father Ryan High School in Nashville, the Catholic school that was Kevin’s alma mater. School had just let out the afternoon of March 19th, and he received a phone call from Norwegian Cruise Lines saying Kevin had been in an accident. The woman on the other end of the line gave him a phone number to the hospital, but they told him there was no patient by the name of Kevin Davis. Desperately, Paul contacted friends for help. Within an hour, one of them was able to put him in touch with a woman from the U.S. Embassy in Mexico. “Mr. Davis, I’ve got some bad news,” she said. “I know,” Paul replied. “He passed.” “Yes, I’m so sorry,” she said.
And with that short exchange, the Davis family’s life changed forever. Kevin, who, as a child would do his homework in the car so he could hang out with friends after school; who befriended almost everyone he met; whose smile lit up the hallways of Father Ryan High School; who was best known for his ability to live life to the fullest; was gone. “He was the type of guy who could take an ember and make a flame out of it,” his uncle Tucker Davis once told me. “Even if you were already having a good day, seeing him would make it 10 times better.” Paul rarely left home in the weeks to follow. It was devastating that the world felt so empty with just one person missing from it.
And yet, Kevin’s story doesn’t end there. His friends, his family, and countless people around Nashville’s Catholic community made sure of that. Father Ryan canceled classes the day after his passing, yet many students still gathered on the school’s football field to offer up a rosary for the Davises. In the weeks to come, countless rosaries, Masses, and spiritual bouquets would be offered up for them. More than 1000 people showed up at Kevin’s funeral and offered their love and support to his family. And many benefactors to Father Ryan donated generous sums of money to the school in his name. This is how the Kevin Paul Davis Memorial Scholarship came about. And it’s how I found myself in Father Ryan’s dining hall to honor Kevin at Raise Your Glass. In addition to being a memorial celebration for him, it’s also an annual fundraiser for the scholarship that bears his name.
Scholarship applicants must be rising seniors with at least a 3.0 grade average. They must be active participants in their school and local communities. They must need the money to help pay their tuition at Father Ryan. And, as a special nod to Kevin, they must write an essay briefly describing their personal definitions of what it means to live life to the fullest. Since May 2013, Paul and Teresa have awarded this scholarship at the end of the school year, at Father Ryan’s Academic Awards Night celebration. More than 28 students have benefitted from it since its inception.
The first Raise Your Glass fundraiser was not the Davises’ idea. Their friends Mike and Barbara Barrett hosted it at their home in 2013. “They were very supportive of us and made everything happen. They put it all together themselves,” Teresa said. She and Paul were so moved by the turnout and the tributes to Kevin that they decided to continue what the Barrett family had started. From 2014 until now, they’ve hosted it on the school’s campus.
Teresa shared this with me as we sat together at Panera on a September afternoon in 2015. I’m a reporter for the Tennessee Register, the diocesan newspaper for the Catholic community in Nashville. I’ve known the Davis family for quite some time, having known Kevin and his older brother Philip since our middle school days together at Christ the King School in Nashville. Upon learning that I wrote for the paper, Teresa contacted me to ask if I would consider doing a Register piece about Raise Your Glass. “Of course,” I said.
So there we were for about an hour, as she answered the questions I had jotted down on a notepad and expressed her gratitude for all our local Catholic community had done to support her and her family in their time of need. “There’s a lot of good that’s happened to us since Kevin’s passing,” she said. “We just wish it didn’t have to come at so high a cost.”
A few weeks later, I went to Raise Your Glass for the first time and would return every year to honor Kevin’s memory. It was a night of joy mingled with grief; a celebration of life amidst the pain of death. It began with Mass offered in the school’s chapel. Father Joe McMahon, a priest friend of the Davis family, reminded the congregation that loss and suffering can only be fully understood in light of the Resurrection of Jesus; that from death comes new life, if we would but have the eyes to see it.
After Mass, the crowd moved to the dining hall. More than 200 people packed the room; all of them there to pay tribute to the young man who had touched their lives in a special way. The space was filled with the aromas of food and the chatter of friendly conversation; punctuated by shouts of laughter and the occasional babies’ cries. Young and old, they showed up; from Kevin’s teachers from Christ the King and Father Ryan to his friends; many of whom were married and now parents themselves. Several alumni-owned restaurants and breweries were on hand to provide barbecue, hot chicken, and beer. The strains of an acoustic guitar rang out as Father Ryan English teacher Randy Lancaster sang and strummed a few ditties. Kevin, though he was no longer alive, was still bringing people together, just like he did on Earth.
As the night drew near to its close, Paul got up to address the crowd. It was here that we were getting to the heart of Raise Your Glass; and why we gathered in the first place. After his speech, we would assemble outside in the school’s courtyard to launch sky lanterns; an ancient custom practiced during China’s Ghost Festival to honor the dead. Olivia Chan, a friend of the Davises whose father is from Hong Kong, introduced them to this tradition shortly after Kevin’s passing. Since then, Kevin’s loved ones launch them at every Raise Your Glass and every special occasion where they miss him the most. They also remember those within the Father Ryan community who died within the past year.
But before we went outside, Paul had something to say. He recalled the many acts of kindness and generosity their family had experienced since Kevin’s passing, which he saw as signs of God’s providence. “As Kevin and Philip were growing up, Teresa always reminded them that they were never alone. They were never cut off from their friends, their family, or God, no matter how hard things got,” he said. “And yet, when Kevin died, we never felt so alone in our lives. When you go through dark times like that, it’s hard to see people’s acts of love and kindness.”
Still, signs of God’s love showed up everywhere. “I believe there is a thin veil separating this life and the next,” he said, “and I am now convinced that God was with us through it all.” He related the stories of close friends and family doing everything in their power to bring Kevin’s body back to Nashville in time for his wake and funeral after airlines delayed his flight home. At one point, the plane containing Kevin’s remains stopped on a layover in Atlanta. Some of Kevin’s classmates just so happened to be at the same airport on a layover during their own travels. When the body finally did arrive, Kevin’s uncle and godfather helped deliver him to the funeral home and stayed with him overnight before the visitation. Still other close friends of Kevin were the pallbearers at his funeral. “It’s hard asking 20-year-old boys for their help in laying their friend to rest, and yet they did,” Paul continued.
“There is a scene in Kevin’s favorite movie Gladiator, in which the character Maximus is speaking to fellow gladiator Juba. Maximus has lost his son and his wife at the hands of corrupt Roman officials, and he and Juba have both been kidnapped by slave traders and sold to a gladiator trainer. Maximus asks Juba if he’ll see his family again. ‘You’ll meet your wife and son again,’ Juba says to Maximus, ‘but not yet. Not yet.’ In the same way, we believe we’ll see Kevin again someday,” Paul said. “But not yet. Not yet.” He ended his speech by thanking everyone once more for their love and generosity and invited us to follow him outside for the lantern launch.
As we headed out into the school’s courtyard, Father Ryan graduate Julian Gomez played “Amazing Grace” on the bagpipes. Julian, who leads the Father Ryan football team onto the field during games, played at Kevin’s burial. When he ordered his traditional bagpiper’s garb from the House of Tartan in Scotland, the colors for his uniform were supposed to be blue, green, red, and white. He asked if instead the blue could be replaced with purple; as a tribute to Kevin since it’s one of Father Ryan’s official school colors. The manufacturer initially said no, but upon learning about Kevin and how he had touched the Father Ryan community so deeply, he made it purple just for him.
As Julian’s somber notes drifted into the air, seeming to carry the lanterns with them, a sense of longing washed over the crowd. Kevin’s presence, like the lanterns dotting the dusky sky, was so close, and yet so far away; just beyond our reach. And we don’t know the day or the hour when we will meet him once more. We will see him again; but not yet. Not yet. But for now, there is much unfinished business that lies ahead of us.
The greatest tribute any of us can pay to Kevin is to live our lives to the fullest, as he did; and to take our cues from the Author of Life Himself, who was Kevin’s greatest inspiration. “I came that you might have life, and have it in abundance,” Jesus said in Saint John’s gospel.
Our God is not a God of death, or of the sorrow, suffering, and other evils that come with it. Those characteristics don’t define Him in any way, shape or form. Indeed, His very essence is Being and Existence itself, and the love that sets Being and Existence into motion. He truly is “the love that moves the sun and other stars,” as the medieval poet Dante Alighieri put it. And to prove it, He contended with death and evil themselves on the cross and won. His disciples went to His tomb three days later looking to visit a corpse only to discover that it somehow was no longer there.
Those of us who follow this Christ, this crucified God, know that every cross we face in this life is not the end of the story. We who share in the Lord’s life and Passion will also hopefully one day share in His Resurrection. We recall this every time we gather for Mass and profess the Nicene Creed together: “I look forward to the resurrection of the dead, and the life of the world to come.”
Our faith teaches us that the Body of Christ does not exist in its entirety only on this earth. Those whom the Davises remember at Raise Your Glass have joined what G.K. Chesterton called the Democracy of the Dead. “Tradition refuses to submit to the small and arrogant oligarchy of those who merely happen to be walking about,” he wrote in his book Orthodoxy. “All democrats object to men being disqualified by the accident of birth; tradition objects to their being disqualified by the accident of death. Democracy tells us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our groom. Tradition asks us not to neglect a good man’s opinion, even if he is our father.”
Those within that democracy who are in heaven make up what the Church calls the Communion of Saints. They are those who, because of the holiness of their earthly lives, enjoy the beatific vision of God in all its fullness and splendor. Our greatest hope as Christians is to one day join them. But for now, our time on Earth is not complete until the Lord wills it.
For now, our lives continue without Kevin and our other loved ones who have gone before us. They continue through our greatest joys and most agonizing pains; through friends and family members getting married; through their children being born; through birthday parties and holiday celebrations and graduations; through Friday night football games as a kilted bagpiper leads a team of young men onto the field to the roar of a purple-clad crowd; through funerals; through daily prayers and the Holy Sacrifice of the Mass; and through lanterns launched and glasses raised to Kevin, who can’t be here for any of it. But we hope that every step we take forward in this life, as unsteady or uncertain as they may be, will somehow lead us to our true home in Heaven; where we will one day be reunited with Kevin; with all of our loved ones who have entered eternity before us, and with the Lord, who has prepared a place for us there.
Every fall, Kevin’s loved ones gather on Father Ryan’s campus to hear Mass together, to share food and fellowship, to shed a tear or two as memories of him are recalled, and to watch sky lanterns drift away into the fading evening light as a kilted bagpiper named Julian plays “Amazing Grace.” And in all their stories and recollections of Kevin they share; in every tribute, celebration, and glass raised to him; they look forward to that glorious day when they’ll finally reunite with him forever, when all grief and sorrow will be cast aside, and they will once more behold him face to face.
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