The last time I saw Alex was at The Sports Bar in Freetown. I didn’t expect to see him there as he’s usually up-country in Bo, where he’s stationed. So when I found him beer in hand I threw an empty cigarette pack that was lying on the table at him and said, “what the hell are you doing here?”

He had just come back from a break in England, he said, and was leaving Sierra Leone in a few weeks – early from his contract here – to join the British Army. “I know how much that pleases you,” he told me jokingly, referring to what he believed are my hippie, pacifist notions.

He was, at that time, as he always was: young, strong, bright-eyed, and shockingly good-looking, with a subdued smile that often broke out into a full shit-eating grin when someone cracked a joke.

It wasn’t until after his sudden and utterly unexpected death (within 12 hours of falling ill) last Sunday that I remembered that I had told Alex things I had never really told anyone before. Not deep, dark, personal secrets, but things about Cambodia – how my life changed from insights and experiences I had there – that led me here, to Sierra Leone, and had changed the course of my life, essentially.

At the time we were in a college bar in Toronto on the last night of training to work as project coordinators with a humanitarian aid organization, and we sat side by side with our backs against the bar getting drunk. I spoke with him the as if we alone were all that mattered, as if the lights had dimmed and a spotlight shone upon us, the other patrons froze in their places, the music skipped and stopped.

I told him things that other people would find strange -- that I had seen human figures in the emaciated bodies of the cattle grazing along the dusty roads, about the ghost-like tanks that were still nestled amongst the trees from the fighting decades off, that I had gotten too close to my driver and had subsequently lost myself in his desperation, left a piece of myself there in Cambodia. And he told me things in return: how he had sat on the bank of a river with a local in – was it Zimbabwe? – that that experience had been one of the best moments in his life, how he had come to an understanding about who he was and what he wanted to do then. And he said more, but it’s all damnedly blurry now.

As time went on in Sierra Leone I saw him less and less – he was upcountry, I left the organization. But I never stopped being utterly impressed by him. I remember now the origin of that impression: we had organized a self-defense class during training in which he taught us basic jujitsu moves (none of which, thankfully, I have had to use) with a confidence, acuity, and grace that belied his age. I looked differently at him after that, somewhat with awe, and with a sincere respect.

I also now remember another moment when he was less composed. We were all at Tokeh Beach. Everyone save Melissa, my former teammate, and myself, was bodysurfing the significant rainy-season waves. All at once we saw our friends run out of the water and jump into the van. I ran to see what was happening and found Dan, Alex’s best friend and teammate here (who he was inseparable from since training) staring vacantly at me from the front seat -- he had been taken by one of the waves and smashed into the shore, losing consciousness for a moment. Alex was in the driver’s seat incredibly distressed, jamming his foot on the clutch and ramming the car into gear towards the nearest hospital. In that moment I could feel the strength of Alex’s feelings and concern for Dan. People here in Sierra Leone would call them brothers.

It is only fitting, then, that Dan was with Alex through the end, while being evacuated in the helicopter and at the UN hospital. When I saw Dan the next day his eyes were vacant again. And I understand fully why, and I imagine they will remain that way for some time, and years to come when he thinks about Alex and the great, great loss.

The real cause of Alex’s death is still unclear, and that has made a terrible event even more distressing as his friends worry about their own safety. Lassa fever, cerebral malaria, meningitis…these are the possibilities the doctors have been investigating.

Regardless of what it turns out to be, it brings to the forefront just how delicate we all are. And all those cheesy clichés – make the most out of life, appreciate each moment, etc, etc – bounce stupidly around in my head.

If I could say one last thing to Alex, I would tell him what I have told you above: that I am in awe of him, that the world has been a better place for him being in it.

And I know that all of the people who he has touched here – his teammates and colleagues, the Sierra Leoneans and the refugees he worked with and beside– they all will remember him and be changed for having known him.

It gives me comfort to think of Alex in this way now: I see him lying on the beach on his stomach, his face turned towards the side, his eyes closed, he’s asleep or resting. He looks peaceful and calm. I think of him as a fallen soldier.

And I want to leave you with one last image of Alex, a moment from a few weeks back when I unexpectedly bumped into him and the rest of the crew at Banana Island. Everybody was sunbathing on their towels, lined up in a row on the beach. I was perched between Melissa and Alyssa, chatting, breaking up the perfect symmetry of ten bodies stretched out in parallel.

Out of the corner of my eye I saw Dan and Alex in a huddle, plotting something together. Then Alex called me, “Vanessa, can I see you for a second?” which would normally have made me suspicious – this being called out – but I heard in his voice a tone of collusion. I went over to the two boys and understood instantly what they wanted. “We’re going to race,” they said, “wanna join?”

And like that they were off, leaping and hurdling their teammates stretched out on the beach, laughing as they barely missed their friends with each footfall. They could have been ten years old.

for Alex, Alex's family, Dan, and the rest of us