leave a tender moment alone.

The group of young men, boys really, all stood in tuxedos singing the same line. I think they were snapping fingers. No piano played, but the song didn’t call for one.

I can’t recall the exact time I met Justin Cope. Maybe it was in the college cafeteria. A better guess would be the lone outdoor basketball court, girded with a dense forest on one side and the rec pool on the other. We’d divvy up teams and I’d wind up opposite of him, trying to guard him as he held his left arm out, his body jerking and juking like MJ or AI.

I was never going to be able to shoot as well as Justin. It was all I could do to slow him down some, maybe impede his dribble as he coasted into the lane. As much as I wanted to crush him on the court, I couldn’t deny feeling what everyone else felt. Justin was the most well-liked guy on campus. He was skinny with an infectious smile and could make the most despised person feel at home.

But he wasn’t a basketball player. Not in the sense one thinks of in college. He was too small. Too nice. So he’d spend weekends with a microphone singing in front of churches. Always churches. And the occasional chapel recital on campus.

This particular concert I’m thinking about was in 2001. My foggy memory believes this, at least. And on the floor in front of the stage was Justin and three others. The crowd was sparse. It was midday on a Sunday afternoon, after all, and most students were either napping or at the beach or anywhere else other than watching a choral performance. But Justin was my friend and plus I got extra credit for my music history class being there. Why not kill a few invisible birds with one invisible stone?

The song in question: Billy Joel’s “The Longest Time”. It was nearly two decades old by this point. But it might have been my first time hearing it. And as I listened to these classmates with goofy grins become a barbershop quartet of sorts, I fell in love with a song the way one falls in love with a new-found flavor of ice cream or topping on a hamburger. I fell in love the way my wife finds a perfect shade of lip gloss.

“The Longest Time” was not the only Billy Joel song during that time I fell in love with. It was months after my now wife and I began dating, or maybe shortly after we were engaged. We kissed in her car in the Charleston rain one evening. And if you know Charleston and you know rain then you know it’s never a light shower or a passing storm. It’s a rain that drenches everything. No umbrella is its rival. But as we sat in her car one night a song came on the radio and I heard a harmonica and then a minute later this line:

I guess I’m just frightened out of my mind

But if that’s how I feel

Then it’s the best feeling I’ve ever known

How I discovered it was a Billy Joel song, I’m not certain. How God knew no song in that moment could be more perfect than a song called “Leave A Tender Moment Alone”, I’m not certain. How quickly it took me to find and download the song that very night on Napster in my dorm room, I’m not certain.

But I remember it was all perfect.

I also can’t recall when I bought the An Innocent Man album that had both “The Longest Time” and “Leave A Tender Moment Alone”. It was probably at the Kmart near campus, the one where I spent my fair share of money on ramen noodles. The Kmart where we had a huge fight and she got out of the car and said she was walking back to campus and I begged her to get back in the car and at some point we decided that fighting might be inevitable but more so was loving each other madly so in that hour we left the tender moment alone and offered apologies and forgiveness.

I was working in Oak Ridge, Tennessee when I found out Justin had died. It was a Tuesday in June. The summer of 2007. I was in a Home Depot, stocking shelves with products that nobody really needed. I got a call from a college friend. “Cope died last night.”

I told the guys working for me I was going home. So I packed up my bag and drove home. It was noon. It was hot. I was numb.

Something about his heart. It was weak. Something from birth. A defect. In his sleep one night, he was gone.

Grief twisted with anger is a time when I find myself close to God. It doesn’t make sense, but when does a young married man full of kindness teaching music to kids in an elementary school dying in his sleep make sense? It didn’t then and doesn’t now. So forgive me if I feel comfortable in those moments to drive home and scream at the Creator for taking away what he has created too soon.

Friday nights we watch movies and eat pizza as a family. After the usual routine of some classic comedy and greasy pepperonis, I turned on regular TV. There was a concert special: Billy Joel’s 100th consecutive sellout from Madison Square Garden. He played the hits. Well, the ones he could fit into a two hour made-for-network-TV special. Songs from several different albums. He did two from An Innocent Man: “Uptown Girl” and the title track. He did not do “Leave A Tender Moment Alone.” He did not, as he once did in a Philadelphia show bring Boyz II Men on stage to help sing “The Longest Time.”

He didn’t have to. He sat at the piano and played many of his other classics. “River Of Dreams”, “New York State Of Mind”, and so on.

He’s older now than the innocent man on the cover of that legendary 1983 album. He’s bald. A bit slower, perhaps. But his music does not change. It’s there forever. And so are the memories of the songs. The people eternally linked to them.

I smile when I think about Justin. I knew him for a few brief years before he was gone. But I can’t forget the basketball, the music, the daps when passing by on campus: one of us off to a class, the other back to the dorms from one.

And I smile when I remember late nights in Charleston with my girl, my bride, the only woman I’ve wanted to be with, for the longest time. The only woman I’ve wanted to share every tender moment with.

I’d give anything for one more game of 21 with Cope. I’d give anything for another make out session in the rain with a Billy Joel ballad playing on the FM dial.

But we don’t get the moments back, do we? We don’t get to live them over again. Except for when we do, every time we blow the dust off the CD and press play.