All days are unremarkable until it isn’t, April 22nd, 2017 was one of those days. I wish I could tell you how the morning started off, but it was truly unremarkable. The day started for me when my mother shouted to me from down the hallway, she turns her phone to me and showed me a picture of Douglas. She held a phone in her hand, shaking and pale she looks at me with such dread in her eyes. Without even speaking, I knew something horrible happened. My knees gave out from underneath me as if the air around me all of a sudden decided to become ten times heavier. She asked, “Do you know him?” Squeaking out a yes passed the knot that was in my throat. I collapsed on the floor. Tears pouring from my face. She got on her knees and held me tight. Then she said the words that would change me forever, “Sweetie, he died in a car accident this morning”.
Every moment, every laugh, every conversation we ever had just flooded my brain. The last time I saw him was as I was driving with my mom on the main road in town. Douglas and Jaylee were opening the doors to the little kitchen. In my usual self, I screamed their names out the window, startling them. Then they turned around waving and laughing at me. Nobody thinks the last time they would see their friend would be them entering a Chinese restaurant. But then again, life doesn’t tell you how things will work out. There’s never a reason or a sign that tragedy is going to strike, and the explanation is dwarfed by the pain caused by it. And now with the loss of our friend, it makes me wonder about myself. About my own mortality and how I want to live my life before it happens. I knew what death was, but I didn’t know what death meant.
E110 FA19 Class Blog 