Friend, jokester and daredevil: How these Hilton Head teens remember one of their own
If you didn’t look too closely, you’d think that Brandon Arrieta was another student standing in front of the senior class mural at Hilton Head High School last week.
Arrieta wore a faded Hilton Head High T-shirt and exchanged jokes in a circle of friends.
But he isn’t a student.
He’s a father of four, two of whom can no longer share in these jokes.
His 10-year-old son, Alex, died in April 2016 from acute myeloid leukemia, a cancer of the white blood cells that inhibits the body’s ability to generate healthy ones so it weakens the immune system. His other son, Cotesy, 16, took his own life in 2020, a few months shy of the fourth anniversary of his brother’s death.
Garrett Mezera, a senior and one of Cotesy’s friends, remembers him as always joking.
“He was funny, but he’d get angry if we made fun of him after he made fun of us,” Mezera said. “Not actually mad, just joking mad.”
Kris Vigh, the mother of two of Cotesy’s closest friends, laughed when she said the boys were always at her house because she provided the best snacks. Her eyes shimmered with tears.
“It’s been tough,” she said. “I miss him.”
Now, a little over a year after Cotesy’s death, his friends rally behind his father — who wears Cotesy’s shirt — as he puts his own handprint on the class’s senior mural in place of his son’s. Some might think it strange to see a grownup so close to a group of teenagers, but to Arrieta, their support has kept him going.
“I wouldn’t have been able to do it if they weren’t with me,” Arrieta said. “If it’s a tough day, a trigger date or anniversary, you’ll find me with one or more of them.”
‘They look out for each other’
Since his son’s passing, Arrieta said he has formed a small community with Cotesy’s friends. And in that, he has received small pieces of Cotesy along the way.
“One friend is the music of Cotesy, one friend is the soccer and the humor,” Arrieta said.
It all started six months after Cotesy’s death. Arrieta said he had been avoiding the restaurant where his son worked with several friends because it was too hard. But he decided to go, not realizing that the boys still worked there.
“When Alex died, I was never able to go around his friends because it was way too painful,” Arrieta said. “In the beginning, that’s how it was with these boys.”
Arrieta said he broke down after Will Todd, Cotesy’s best friend, said he was late to work because he had spent too long at Cotesy’s grave.
“I lost it, I totally lost it and walked away,” Arrieta said. “And then he lost it, and he had to work, poor kid.”
Mezera and the other boys who were working that day saw him and locked him in an embrace as they cried, Arrieta said.
“They just sat there and held me,” he said.
It has been hard finding a positive outlook since the tragedy, but, according to Arrieta, these boys have been able to give him that.
“They look out for each other,” Arrieta said. “Teenagers don’t want to talk, and they’re not going to talk to their parents.”
After losing one friend, these young men have doubled down on their efforts to make sure they talk about what’s bothering them, according to Arrieta.
“It’s truly amazing, instead of only impacting the boys in a negative way that their friend died, they’ve developed a sincere empathy for others,” Arrieta said.
As they waited to place their hands on the mural at the end of B-hall, a place typically swirling with conversations about homework and test dates, the boys remembered how fearless Cotesy was and how much he liked to make people laugh.
James Levy, a student who was friends with both Cotesy and Alex, said he will never forget Cotesy’s demeanor.
“I hear him laughing in my head,” Levy said, “just always happy.”
This story was originally published June 6, 2021 at 2:04 PM.
