It will never make sense. There will be more questions than answers. Perhaps no answers will ever exist.
The endless hours of the night, unable to sleep. Pillow soaked in tears. The pain of losing a loved one at such a young age seared in the back of the brain.
Wondering - what did we do to deserve this? Why him? Why now?
This is the living hell I picture for my friend's family - one that I proudly call a second family, an extension of my own flesh and blood. A family I have known for almost half of my life now.
I caught wind of the bad news when my friend called me - a friend that never calls me, mind you - as I was picking up my sick girlfriend from her work. Before this, I had dropped her off, and she had been desperately trying to reach me to come back to her work moments after I dropped her off.
Unfortunately, my phone had dropped out of my coat pocket sometime between carrying the garbage bag of cat litter to the trash and starting the car on my morning quest to drop her off at work. I retrieved it as I was about to pull into my parking spot, only to see an incoming call from her.
I thought that was going to be the worst call I would receive in the morning. In some ways, I wish I left my phone in the snow, so that in some magical world, none of the bad news that came from it in the proceeding 10 minutes actually happened.
But when I saw my friend's caller-ID pop up a few blocks away from picking her up, I wasn't sure what to think in those brief seconds. What could he be calling for - a pocket dial?
His voice was choking up. He told me the tragic news through the cracking. I couldn't believe any of it. Any of what he told me. I blacked out everything he said after the first initial sentence he said, so when I did get off the phone with him, I was crying myself, unable to recall to my girlfriend on how it actually happened, but that it happened.
As the high sun of the afternoon faded into the darkness of my Wednesday, I tried contemplating the tragedy from every conceivable angle. Random bouts of tears occupied the afternoon. And of course, I thought of a similar "gone way way too soon" situation with my cousin, who died of a brain tumor at a very young age.
I thought of that situation and how it rattled and shook the foundation of our family. I was too young to understand everything that was happening at that time, but the effects of that never leave the individuals directly involved. Every Christmas Eve is a reminder of my cousin's birthday (she would be 33 next week), a rough time for my mom's side of the family, particularly for my aunt and cousins.
Sadly, I know that it's a pain that never goes away. The "what ifs" of how that person's life would be now if they were still alive are limitless. This thought alone can keep you up at night - and it probably will quite often.
The only thing we can do as humans in these situations is to live our lives in their honor. Represent what they did and what they were in their short lives. Beacons of youth, energy, curiosity, bewilderment, hope. The smiles are burned in the back of our retinas.
Know that, while the pain may never go away, we can fondly remember the brief flicker of life that they did have, the joy they brought into our lives, and know that they are still with us in a spiritual sense.
My most sincere condolences to my friend's family - my family, our family. We're all here for you. Much love, and even more tears.
