When I was eleven, my godmother died. I didn’t know her that well, so I wasn’t too hurt by the news. We attended her funeral and I didn’t shed a single tear – but once her body was lowered into the ground and the final eulogies were being given, I was bawling. It’s something that I couldn’t handle: someone I knew was dead. It was probably the fact that I never got a chance to get to know her at all that hurt me the most. I never got a chance to establish any memories with her, and now I never will.

Same thing when a classmate passed away from a heart failure when I was in the eighth grade. I knew him even less than I knew my godmother, but knowing he was gone was terrible to deal with. He was just that guy who’d play basketball with his friends, went out with a girl a year younger than him, and was probably a really good dancer. Everything I knew about him, though, I found out after he had passed away and the memorials came up on Facebook. Notes were here and there, dedications and promises to never forget him. I never knew what happened to Facebook accounts when you died, but I guess I learned when his profile became a memorial for people to pay their respects and grant wishes for the wellbeing of the family.

On Tuesday, Connor and I went back to visit Damian after receiving a text from his brother. My stomach was in knots when we walked in and saw Simon sitting there with his head in his hands. I could only imagine what he felt right then: his parents were taken from him; his only brother was walking a tightrope between life and death. He’d be alone without any family. It made me grateful to have the two parents I had back home, who had recently given me a lecture on drug usage. I felt guilty to admit that I felt better about my life while looking upon him, in the slums of his. It’s terrible, it’s inconsiderate and it’s inappropriate – but I’m only human and I can’t help it if I’m automatically set to recall the benefits to living when things get rough. It wasn’t like I was going to him and talking about my easier life; it was just in that moment that I realized how totally insignificant the issues I had before were.

I remembered how I’d wake up on those uniform-free days just a few minutes earlier to sort out my outfit, and once I spilled some milk or hot cereal on it, my day would be ruined. Or when, in the eighth grade, I told a guy I liked him and I found out he liked someone else, so I spent the night sad and teary, wishing I were her. All the drama, all the emotions – they all felt wasted now that I was in a real, heart-pounding predicament. The fact that other people have such hard lives – like the homeless in winter and the lonely old woman who rocks on her porch – while others just don’t see – that hit me. If the average life expectancy was seventy-five years, I’d only lived a little more than twenty-one percent of that; that wasn’t nearly enough time to actually have problems significant enough to be pitied or sympathized with. I was constantly replaying that moment over in my head, when Sebastian gave me that long talk about love and fate, and I had even started to refer to it as Sebastian’s Principle, which was overly dramatic, but it was a quick way to give reference to it.

Simon couldn’t speak to us about what he had called us over for, so we couldn’t ask, but when he woke us up after a nap in the waiting room and red rings engulfed his eyes, I knew something was happening. After a few minutes, another doctor came by and pulled him aside. Upon hearing whatever the doctor had told him, he broke down completely. Whenever you first meet someone, you can never imagine them crying; they always appear to be this imperturbable wall of force. I had seen evidence of Simon’s tears, but never had I witnessed the action in the moment, and when I did, I felt such a rush of emotion within my confusion and dread that I felt as if a brick or two of that wall was broken down. I felt like I knew him more now that I was seeing him at his worst.

A few minutes after he had stopped and wiped away his face, he looked up at us from his hands. “They’ve taken him off life support.”

After Damian died, nothing felt right. Everything went on in a daze. It was the time I tried the ecstasy, or at least the minutes leading up until it took effect: I knew something was going to happen all this time (he’d either recover or not) and my mind had so many thoughts flitting around like angry wasps that when they finally stopped to let me get some rest, I was stuck in a null void waiting for something new to happen. I prayed for the best, and tried to tell myself I was expecting the worst, but in truth I knew he’d get better – I felt it in me. People don’t just die so unfairly, right? Surely, he’d get better. Then, when Simon told me that one, simple statement, it made sense in some part of my brain, but at the same time, it was like I was numb. I didn’t seem to understand that he was dead – it didn’t really affect me because I didn’t believe it. I couldn’t believe it.

As I stood before his coffin, at the very front of the church, I saw his lifeless body and it took its toll on me. It was like the moment I saw his body after the accident – suddenly my knees were weak and met the ground as I buried my face in my hands and sobbed, for lack of a better word. He was gone, in a most unfair way. A sacrifice of innocence for all the sins we had done. It was a mockery towards us, to scorn the one who had the most genuine of intentions. Was there no mercy? Couldn’t he have been given a much easier rest, rather than a week-long pain and struggle.

It made me realize that life’s too short to just dwell on insignificant issues and trends. Life’s not fair, and it doesn’t matter if you’re good or bad --- there isn’t a naughty or nice list like Santa’s got. There’s no such thing as good or bad, in fact – it was just important to live your life, I guess, and make the most out of things because you never know if you’ll be given a second chance.

You aren’t promised a tomorrow, so you should just stop saving things for then.

Labels: nanowrimo