I Will Follow You Into The Dark.
I suppose it’s time to go to my talking board and finally talk about what’s been on my mind as of late, and it’s not a fun topic. As a middle schooler, I remember thinking about death every now and then. Hearing about all of these kids losing their friends and family, all of the deaths happening in other people’s circles, it made me wonder at what point in my life will this all start happening to me? It may seem selfish to think about, but a kid gets worried. Unfortunately, it did not take too long. A few years later, I was in high school and heard that a girl from my middle school had gotten into a terrible accident and passed away. She was one of the nicest people I knew, and it was really the first death that had a major impact on me. From here, it was the child of a mentor, and now most recently, my great-grandfather and two of my aunts, one of which I was incredibly close with. It didn’t take long for that middle schooler to grow up.
I’ve had a little time to move on (as best as possible) from this terrible, terrible month in my family, but the moving on has added an element of thought to all of this. Death strikes different people at different times in different ways. This may be obvious for many people out there, but I hadn’t truly thought of this until this past week. Whenever a person dies, we immediately think of how it affects US and how WE will deal with it. Then we think about those affected. The children who lost a mother, the parents who lost a son, the nieces and nephews who lost an aunt, the two or three generations who lost a father-figure…it is such a momentous and traumatizing event, death. It can change lives forever, creating or destroying bonds.
How do we cope with it? Do we find solace in the thought that they’ve “moved on to a better place”? Do we ignore it? Do we try to simply move on, or do we try our damned hardest to live up to whatever they would have liked to see us become? As a Christian, I am taught to believe in a Heaven and a Hell, which I do believe in (whether or not this makes me “weak minded” is of no concern of mine), though I still have trouble finding much solace in death, because it is so uncertain. My beliefs are, at the end of the day, faith-based and there is no way of knowing such an afterlife exists (nor is there any way of knowing the nonexistence of one). While I have faith in God that He takes care of all my loved ones who move on through the pearly gates, it still hurts a great deal down here on Earth. It doesn’t just hurt me for my own personal reasons, it hurts me because of how many people are affected by this death business. While our loved ones move on to their better place, we are left behind, grieving, mourning, and asking “why?”
I suppose there are some lessons we could never learn if those loved ones were still with us; things that we’d never do if we still had them to talk to. There is some grand scheme at work here, whether it be set forth by my god, your god, or just chaos, things just seem to fall into place for a reason. As of now, I have not figured this grand plan yet, but I will find out sooner or later…hopefully more later than sooner.
My suggestion to any of you right now: start hugging your loved ones. Tell them you love them. Spend as much time with them as you can, because you never know what’s going to happen around that corner. That is the lesson I’ve learned from this past month: don’t wait. You will thank yourself later, trust me.
