I Don't Want to Wait for Our Lives to Be Over

In Memory of James Van Der Beek (March 8, 1977 – February 11, 2026))

We learned your name in the glow of after-school light,

when televisions hummed like distant surf

and time felt wide as any opening theme.

You stood there—earnest, unarmored—

a boy rehearsing gravity

before the world required it.

We did not know then

how quickly the credits roll.

James Van Der Beek,

your voice carried the fragile weather

of almost-adults everywhere—

those hallway philosophers,

those porch-step dreamers

who believed longing itself was proof of life.

In Dawson's Creek,

you gave us permission to feel too much,

to speak in paragraphs

when a shrug might have been safer.

And now the river keeps moving.

This is the shape of elegy:

a shoreline after the tide withdraws,

a theme song echoing in an empty room,

a generation older than it meant to be.

We thought the story would pause for us,

would hold the frame

until we were ready.

But nothing waits.

Not youth.

Not the soft astonishment

of first becoming known.

Still—

somewhere a rerun flickers to life.

Somewhere a voice breaks open the quiet.

And in that small, electric forever,

you are still there—

earnest, unarmored—

asking the question

we are all still asking,

not wanting to wait

for our lives

to be over.