Hell of a Day!
03-06-2001,

Hell of a Day...

March 6, 2001

Well, my day started with an email, telling me that Ven, the very special person I wrote about yesterday, passed away last night. I heard today also, that his last word before he fell into his coma over the weekend, was "peace". He was pretty out of it for the past few weeks, not recognizing people, and not eating or talking much. Why does that last word make me think that maybe he is in a much better place. I sure would like to believe that.

I have never been really good at death. When I was 11 my best friend died. She was only 3. Okay, maybe that sounds funny that my best friend was 3 when I was 11, but I loved her so very much. She was the little girl who lived across the street, and our families were pretty close. She followed me everywhere I went, and we spent lots of time together. I always did like playing with the little kids on the block. The day that Elizabeth died, she wanted to play with me, but I wanted to go swimming next door with my friend Mary. Mary wasn't as much of a kid person, and she didn't always like Lizzy hanging around, so I told her I would come over and play with her later. If only I knew then what I know now... Lizzie's dad was helping us put in our own swimming pool that day, and her mom was busy (having 6 children does that to you), so Lizzie's older sister Lisa was supposed to be watching her, but Lisa assumed that she would be playing with me as usual, and didn't think anything of her not being in sight. We lived in a neighborhood where everyone just sorta kept an eye out for everyone's children. I don't know for sure why Lizzie decided to try to get into their swimming pool (which was green at the time, since they were battling an algea problem), but I always felt that it was because I didn't let her go swimming with me... but she did, she climbed up on the filter and fell into the pool. When Lisa saw me a little later, she asked me where Lizzy was, and when I said she wasn't with me, all panic broke loose. She was found in the pool, and while the paramedics were able to revive her for a moment, they couldn't save her. That was my first experience with death, and it has haunted me ever since. I still try to visit her grave site at least once a year, mostly around her birthday, and I think of her from time to time, but I have gone on.

There have been others, I lost an aunt when I was 12 to a tragic car accident. She left behind my 3 cousins who were 11, 8 and 4 at the time. They have had to grow up without a mother, and I do see the difference that it made in their lives, and I know how much better they would have been now had she lived. They still cry for her, as do we all when we think about her senseless death, but we have all moved on.

Other than those deaths, there have been some distant relatives, and older relatives, and while you feel sadness and pain.. most of the deaths were expected. Not to say that they didn't effect me, but not in the way that Lizzie and Aunt Debbie's deaths did, and I have moved on.

But today, I feel such incredible sadness and this wasn't even a relative. I don't know how to explain what he meant in my life, but I do know that it was a lot. And I am sitting here wishing that things could be different, but yet I know that I will go on, and probably even forget the sadness that I feel at this moment, and that makes it even worse. The living continue to live, and they move on. Makes me wonder how quickly I will be forgotten when I am gone. Will I have touched the lives of those around me? Will they cry for me, mourn me, wonder if I have gone onto a better place. I hope that my life has had some impact on those around me, you just never know when it will be your time to go. I heard a quote the other day that seems so fitting. It said something like this.. "You come into this world crying, while everyone around you is laughing and smiling, live your life so that when you leave the world, you are the one smiling, while everyone around you is crying". How true it is... how true...