NO EASY WAY

There really is no easy way to start talking about someone who died.  You can mention how great or lousy of a person they were, or just state the facts.  Either way, it doesn’t seem right.  All of a sudden, you’re talking in past tense.  He was her brother, he was a good guy.  There’s something missing in the sense of it all, and you don’t know where to place your finger.  You don’t know how to fix it.

I knew Josh when I was younger.  He was a few years older than me, and he would come to the pool every so often.  I didn’t really know him in the sense of even remotely close to friends, but we were associated.  It’s weird to find out that someone who you had passed or talked to maybe a few times is now gone.  But I think what’s really got me is the idea that he’s a part of my childhood memories, associated with happy times splashing around at a neighborhood pool.  I have one distinct memory of him standing by the side of the pool.  I always thought he had been really cute.  And now, he’s gone.  A horrible car accident after visiting his sister for her birthday.  He was thrown out of the windshield.

 It’s when things like this happen that people begin to question fate, and question if this person was supposed to have affected them somehow.  At this point, I’m still wondering how much I ever knew the kid.  Did he change something in me?  I barely knew him, so how could he have?  Questions pop up every which way and your head becomes fogged.  It all seems unfair and none of it makes any sense.  But it happened, and you feel as though you’re supposed to accept it.  It’s the only thing left to do, right?  But then, where does that leave us?  How am I supposed to be feeling?

Should I be glad that I never knew him better?  That seems selfish.  But you still think it, don’t you?  There are too many questions and too few answers.  So that leaves us to soak it all in.  Just breathe on it for a few days.  Life goes on, right? 

That’s the weirdest part of it all.  Something as terrible as death happens, and you become stuck in this vague world of confusion.  And while you’re left to mope around and wrack your brain for some solution to it all, the life around you continues.  It seems so cliché, but it is so true.  You’re sitting there thinking about something so huge as death, and everyone around you is talking about gossip and what happened on facebook today.  Life goes on.  It has to.