Andrew Left The Window Open

Charlotte left a basket of letters. Gabriel left his golf bag. Andrew left the window open.

The District has a transient population. After graduation, the talented and ambitious migrate to the nation’s capital to thrive in its charged, connected climes. In a few seasons, though, the young and mobile sometimes set off for new horizons, taking with them polished résumés and leaving behind whatever will not fit in a U-Haul.

The accumulated debris left in closets, attics and basements of the rented group homes of the District form a fossil record of the city’s previous occupants. In the Northeast rowhouse where I live, you can walk through the attic and people-watch by possessions, speculating on the lives of former tenants through their abandoned junk.

Andrew Baer came into the house in the meandering, third-degree nature of 20-something friendship. My housemate Kristy met him at a function at the National Building Museum. They shared “East of Eden” as a favorite book. Andrew had curly black hair and a focus in conversation. Kristy liked him. A few quasi-dates followed, but nothing came of it. Andrew stayed on the scene, though, showing up at potlucks and happy hours. Easy-going with an understated intelligence, he mixed well and entertained with stories from a military childhood and a few years tramping abroad.

When a room opened up in our house, we thought of Andrew. He lived in Woodbridge at the time with his family, commuting to George Mason’s Arlington campus for graduate school classes at the School for Conflict Analysis and Resolution. Andrew deliberated on the offer — giving up free food and rent should warrant a second thought — but he relented after enjoying some home-cooked meals of our own followed by fun nights on the H Street corridor.

When he moved in, Andrew kept his room with a Spartan sensibility. A floor-level desk, a woven map of Afghanistan covering the hardwood, a nest of sheets and sleeping bags serving as a bed in the corner. The room’s curious minimalism nevertheless invited a thousand questions about the few items on display.

Once, on a country drive in Virginia, I mentioned that my mom taught kindergarten. Andrew said he had taught kindergarten when he lived in South Korea. He had written a one-act play about the experience, and it won a competition, running for a time in a New York festival.

Wait, you lived in Korea?

Andrew’s stories, whether moose-hunting in Alaska or taking off to the Middle East on a work assignment, always took a little explaining; however, once unpacked, each far-flung adventure’s telling drew you in to the experience and the person.

Only a few months after moving in, Andrew went to Afghanistan. The one month of his assignment became almost five. Andrew sent dispatches of mountain hikes and hand-fishing with Afghans.

I told Andrew he had left his bedroom window open.

In March, a day after Kristy and I expected Andrew home, we sat quietly on the rug in his room. That afternoon, Andrew’s dad called to tell us that Andrew died in a car crash in Dubai.

We had expected Andrew to come back with new stories. The end of that was impossible to imagine, especially for someone as far-reaching and expansive as Andrew.

Kristy and I piled Andrew’s belongings in boxes. Like the items crowding our attic, we could reconstruct a composite image of the person who lived here from the things left behind. Books on Islam, Middle Eastern culture, poetry, jazz records, a verse from Psalms handwritten on a yellow slip of legal pad. Here lived a person with a lively mind and deep understanding of self. A seeker, full-hearted, who formed connections the world over.

In the District, people leave just when you get to know them. You remember the shared times and smart from the sudden stoppage of friendship. The basket of letters, the golf bag — these forgotten items form a small marker to those who left them. But for Andrew, his memory is kept instead by what he took with him, too many gifts withdrawn too early, and each one missed.