In Memory of Zachary Thomas Merrill
By Patricia Lynn Murray

Zack Merrill was my best friend. I didn’t know him in stage or hang out with him in Bamako. We never planned vacations together or even planned our lives around each other. We didn’t have to. He was my brother. You don’t plan your life around a brother you just expect him to always be there.

He was my next door neighbor for the last two years. He was the person that I shared Tuesday lunches with and market days. The person’s house I went to when I wanted to get away or needed a friend. He always made me laugh and made me feel important. He was the guy who picked his nose and then chased me around with his boogers on his hand. He was the one who scraped the sweat and dirt off his arms with a knife and then would proceed to flick it off me. He was the one who loved to play checkers, scrabble, risk, and Harry Potter Quidditch card games. He often accused me of cheating, breaking the rules, or using words in scrabble that did not exist and even if I cheated I never won.

In the last two years I have never laughed more or shared more with anyone. I can honestly say I have never had another friendship as good or as special as the one I had with Zack. People recently have come up and told me how much he would stick up for me when I wasn’t around, that he even would go to Cheryl’s office and tell her problems I might have at site just because he was worried about me. Cheryl said she knew more about what was going on at my site because of Zack than because of my conversations with her. Someone once asked Zack what kind of job I would do as PCVL, and it took Zack less than a minute to reply. He told the person how great he thought I would be and when the person replied that’s because you don’t have to live in Segou, Zack replied NO, that’s because I have lived next to her for the last two years.

I could sit at Zack’s house and we would talk for hours, listen to music, read, or just do nothing at all but it never seemed to matter because as long as he was around I felt safe, happy, and content. I often got mad at Zack when people asked our age or I tried to explain that I was older than him. He immediately would tell them that I was lying and that he was my older brother. And for the record, I am 25 and he was only 23. Whenever I had a project to do Zack was always there to help and to give advice. He could build a soak pit better than anyone and build a well better than any volunteer I have met.

Most of all though he was my friend and I was his. There is nothing he did not tell me and nothing I was scared to tell him. He was there when my house was broken into three or four times. When I went to his house crying because a boy had broken my heart, he gave me chocolate and his gameboy. When I was stressed about EFBT he came to my house and stayed the entire two weeks to make sure I had all the help I needed. I in return was there for him. Over Christmas, Zack was sick with pneumonia and had a fever of 105. I was sure that I would lose my teammate being over three hours away from a phone and having no clue what was wrong. We had rags on his head, chest, and his feet in water. And somehow he managed to keep a smile and keep telling us he was sorry for being such a burden. Finally we got some medicine and got him in a car quickly back to San.

I was there when he worked on his well projects, and remember going down in his well with him pulling out buckets of water for hours and getting completely soaked. We pretended like it was raining and spent the hours singing all the different songs we could think of but especially “singing in the rain” and he knew almost all the words. I remember helping him out with EFBT, painting murals, and doing soak pits at his site.

And finally I remember the last few days I spent with him before he died. Zack had changed. He had mentioned how he hadn’t smiled in weeks and how he felt like he just couldn’t do anything right or for that matter anything in all. We spent two and a half days just talking, holding him while he cried, and trying to figure out what we could do to make it better. In the end he said he would be ok. He decided to go back to site and promised he would meet me in Segou. He even promised that if he wasn’t ok he would come and find me no matter where I was so we could talk. I can’t tell you how many times I have gone over this story in my mind and thought what could I have done different? Was I really the friend he needed in those final days? The only response I can give you is I did my best, and he also in the end made his own decisions in spite of the promises he had declared.

I watched a video the other day of Zack, and I just wanted to rewind it over and over and over again so that I could pretend like he was alive and hear his voice just one more time. But I can tell you this. Zack never did any of this to hurt us. Zack felt guilty even killing a spider or a scorpion, and although he did when necessary it was only in self defense. I can tell you that Zack truly loved everyone he met and would never want any of us to think it was our fault. And I can tell you that he hasn’t left us all together. If anything we can all say we were blessed to share even a brief two years with someone as special as he. We can remember how he made us laugh and remember the good times. We can remember the next time someone drinks out of a salidigaga, gives someone a wedgie, or blows a snot rocket and then tries to wipe it on you that Zack would have done that. We can remember that he was our friend, and I will always remember that he was my little brother.

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