When Innocence Fades
I am almost eighteen years old and I had yet to experience any greater loss besides a cat that I’d had my whole life. So its the truth when I say that death was still a very foreign concept to me, personally. But that all changed one Saturday morning.
My drama class was taking place in a competition and we were all meeting at another high school for the competition. I got there a few minutes late but that wasn’t a problem. Despite the excitement that I felt about the upcoming competition, I instantly could tell that something was wrong with a friend of mine. She was quiet, which knowing her is strange enough and she wouldn’t talk to anyone. I went all morning wondering what was wrong with her.
But when I did find out what it was, minutes before we were to go on strange, it hit me heavily. A mutual friend of ours had been killed early that same morning, not but ten days after she turned eighteen. It explained everything. But despite the news hitting me, it didn’t sink in just yet. It only really hit me when I was home, checking my Facebook and all my updates were photos of that friend that died.
Then and there I started to cry. The knowledge that she wasn’t coming back slowly creeping into my mind. That it wasn’t a joke, that it wasn’t something that happened to someone else. This was happening to me and my friends and her family. It was something so personal and close that I didn’t know what to feel. How could something like that happen? I had just seen her the day before, heard her laugh the day before.
At her funeral all my friends broke down. No matter how much we said that we wouldn’t cry because we were celebrating her life, it didn’t go but a few minutes into the service that we were all crying our eyes out. This new realization hurt so much that I couldn’t take in anything else but that pain. Even more when I learned that it was a drunk driver that killed her while she was walking home late at night. After refusing to get in the car with a drunk friend. The irony of it all hurt that most. She died doing the right thing.
It’s only been two months since her death and it still hangs in the air between all of us at school, is still a constant thought in all of our minds. Finally coming so close in contact with death taught me that every moment is precious, that no matter what our choices are, there are still unfavorable outcomes and not knowing when these would happen we need to love everyone around us and treasure every moment we have with them. We need to live life to its fullest and in place of those that weren’t suppose to die yet.
Jasmine D.
One Response to “When Innocence Fades”
By HGV training on Dec 1, 2008 | Reply
So true Make the most of everyday