An Elegy for Nicholas, the Robin Hood of Bodega Bay : A spirited 7-year-old loses his life and yet lives on in body and in spirit. For his aunt, it redefines ‘senselsss tragedy’.

Halfway around the world, the valiant heart of young Nicholas Green beats in the chest of a 14-year-old Roman boy, but our Nicholas lives in the many hearts he touched during his 7 short years of life.

The first child of my sister Maggie, my first nephew, the first grandchild, beloved cousin and playmate of my daughter. Kathryn observed her 6th birthday this week inconsolable after the news of the death of her Nicholas.

The death of a child is every parent’s worst nightmare. I write this for my sister and her husband Reg, and for my daughter and my son so they won’t forget Nicholas when the memories grow dim and the freckled face in the photos seems unfamiliar. We will all grow old, but Nicholas will forever be 7.

I can hear his voice even now, echoing through my mind as he shouts commands to his little sister Eleanor and his cousin. “El! I need my soldiers in their barracks . . . Kathryn, I’m Robin Hood and you are Maid Marian, and El is too.” Everything Nicholas did was infused with conviction and resolve. He organized and oversaw the games of childhood with authority, sweeping the others along in his powerful wake. Even my Kathryn, ever strong and defiant, would willingly play Maid Marian to his Robin Hood and follow his grandiose schemes building castles in the sand.

Telling Kathryn that her beloved older cousin’s life was stolen by bad men thousands of miles away was the hardest thing I have ever had to do. She sobbed, body shaking, gut-wrenching sobs. Tears poured down her cheeks in torrents as her father held her on his lap. As she cried, I wondered how much she would remember of Nicholas as the years passed, and I mourned that my 2-year-old son Zachary would have no memories at all.

Only last summer, we traveled to Bodega Bay to spend time with Reg and Maggie while Kathryn and Zachary enjoyed the company of their cousins Nicholas and Eleanor. Those memories are seared in my consciousness now.

When I asked Kathryn what she remembered of that trip just three months ago, she replied, “Playing Robin Hood and building sand castles and dancing to the music at night.” I hope she never forgets those things. We have photographs taken at the beach and during a train ride at Sonoma; we don’t have pictures of Robin Hood and dancing. That is what Kathryn needs to remember, and I want to help her. She will always be able to see the pictures in the photo album, but the pictures in her mind may fade. When the name Nicholas is mentioned, I don’t want the first thing she remembers to be that he died at the hands of bandits. I want her to remember him as her hero, her Robin Hood, her dance partner, her cousin, her friend. For myself, the necessary detachment I’ve felt at the endless parade of death is at an end. Watching television commentators mouth empty phrases about some “senseless tragedy” only inspires a hollow rage. For the second time in a year, the people of Sonoma County have watched helplessly as the shadow of evil fell on their children, killed without rhyme or reason. First, Polly Klaas snatched from her own bedroom in Petaluma, and now Nicholas Green of Bodega Bay, gunned down as he slept.

The sad, savage drama played out on that lonely highway in the southern part of Italy is not so very distant from the violent death visited on so many children in our own cities. The loss of a child is never acceptable or sensible. This talk of “senseless tragedy” somehow permits the daily carnage to serve as fodder for the insatiable appetites of our blood lust. The death of Nicholas has brought this point home to me in a manner as powerful as it was unexpected. Although I was cognizant on some intellectual level, in my gut I now realize that every sheet-draped body on the evening news represents flesh and blood human beings who leave behind grieving mothers, fathers, children, aunts, uncles and cousins who ache at the loss of that life.

In his death, Nicholas was a hero. Maggie and Reg made it possible for his passing, like his life, to have meaning. Besides the boy who received his heart, a 19-year-old Sicilian woman has new life with his liver. His kidneys now purify the blood of a 14-year-old girl and an 11-year-old boy. Three additional recipients will benefit from his pancreas and his beautiful eyes.

The people of Italy have responded to this terrible tragedy and the ensuing generosity of the family with an incredible outpouring of genuine emotion. The gifts Nicholas bestowed in death have rightly evoked the gratitude of many. But I would trade all their thanks and all their relief to have my nephew back so that he could he continue being Robin Hood and dance partner, brother and son and grandson, cousin and friend.

Godspeed, Nicholas. We will miss you.