The short story in the midsection of the Powell Tribune about Casey Christensen’s passing, apparently by his own hand, up on the lonely old bench, touched my heart.

Maybe it’s because I’m in a kind of vulnerable place myself right now, but it’s more than that. I knew Casey when he was a kid. His life was more than a footnote.

I knew his whole family. They lived down the block and across the street from us on Avenue J. They went to our church and his dad was my father’s physician and occasional fishing buddy.

Casey, like me, was the oldest kid in his family. He was a few years younger than I, but we were friendly with one another, having to endure many hours of church together.

The late 1960s and early ’70s were a simpler time and Powell was considerably smaller. Town more or less stopped at the end of our street. Everybody knew everybody.

Hillmans lived next door to us. Across the street were the Dozahs and the LaFollettes lived next to them. Mike Westgaard walked by the front of my house every day during school carrying his trombone. Mr. Summers, who I think was a school administrator, did the same. Rain or shine.

We played and fought outside in the summer. Our TV was a little black-and-white box which was hardly worth watching. I slept in the backyard most of the time, rolling my sleeping bag out on the lawn and falling asleep beneath the stars.

We rode our skinny-tired 10-speeds down to the swimming pool, where you could swim all day for a dime, for entertainment. If you were feeling naughty or daring you could buy a Swisher Sweets cigar at Buntin’s Pool Hall and go make yourself sick.

A few years ago a guy told me he remembered me beaning him with a rock during a neighborhood rock fight, which I don’t have any memory of. I was a pretty typical preacher’s kid, I think. And I think Casey was a pretty typical doctor’s kid.

As I grew older, I lost track of Casey. I remember him shooting a big bull elk on the Bighorns after his dad allegedly found it from the air which fostered some resentment (imagine that) on the part of some earthbound hunters. That’s about the last I remember of Casey until many years later, as I went away to college.

Everybody who lived in Powell in those days remembers the passage of Casey’s dad Ray from a brain tumor. It was a blow to our town. Not that many physicians were willing to live in a place like Powell, where you’re on call always and there’s always some kid falling off a haystack or getting beaned with a rock.

It was a painful loss for my father because Ray was his buddy and it was not an easy path to the river’s edge.

It had to be incredibly, unspeakably painful for his family. A hole in everybody’s heart, never to be completely filled.

Everybody deals with grief in their own way. While I’d never pretend to know enough to ascribe motives, I know Casey’s brother Mike became a minister and you all know Dr. Kelly. I don’t know what his sister ended up doing, but maybe Casey never completely reconciled to his loss.

I last saw Casey maybe 15 or 16 years ago at a mutual friend’s house. We talked about going chukar hunting but it never happened. He moved to Florida, I think, soon after that, and I never saw him again.

I do know this much: When I go up there (the bench) and drive miles and miles out into the great emptiness and get out of the car and walk out into the silence, God ain’t far away. Not far at all.

Casey wasn’t alone when he died.