My Experience with Death

For my Perspectives on Death & Dying class, I had to write a paper on an experience with death. Here is my paper:

It was midday one Saturday in February of my junior year of high school. I was hanging out with a group of friends playing some games. It was the usual routine when we were not off on some school activity. My buddy, Chris, got a call. One of our friends had been shot in a hunting accident. It all seemed a bit surreal. Surely, he was going to be alright. We continued playing games as if things were not too shaken up, but phone calls kept coming. As the day progressed, the story changed. Our friend had committed suicide.

I have a thousand stories I could tell regarding that day and the week following. The Sunday morning church service was awful because he was not there. Sunday night, I was at Pizza Hut with people I had not hung out with in years. Monday night was a special church service which had more in attendance than I have ever seen in twenty one years. The wake resulted in a line of people stretching out the front door and down the sidewalk. There was a school gathering. A group of my friends walked out the front doors of the school in the middle of the day on Monday. We skipped the second half of Wednesday too. There were no repercussions. They still held class on the day of the funeral, but it was pointless. The cemetery was packed. There was an empty chair at graduation the following year.

Out of all of this, perhaps one of the most important thing I learned is suicide is not simply about the individual. I watched a town of 2,500 people come to a screeching halt in a single weekend. When the topic of suicide comes up in any sort of conversation, my mind starts looking at all the people around me who would be affected. Let me just say it is a long list that stretches across the continent. Not because I am important. Just because that is the effect it has on every single person we know. When I go home on holidays, I still have a few momentos sitting in my bedroom. When Chris and I hang out, I see our friend's baseball glove sitting on his desk just below a picture of them. When I was home for Christmas, another high schooler had committed suicide. Everyone at church was expressing their sympathies. Turns out I knew his brother. Did I mention my friend committed suicide on his mother's birthday?

The other major lesson I learned was how quickly it all happens. The expression “one minute they are there, the next they are gone” is not something to be taken lightly. I remember one night in junior high when a game of hide-and-go-seek had broken out on a city block. My friend and I hid out behind Chris's house just talking about life because the game was not all that exacting. I remember baseball games, making silly videos, and the hours spent playing Golden Eye on the N64. Never even thought about the idea we would not graduate together. Quite honestly, up until that point, I had never thought about anything like that. I was too busy pushing through high school to get into a good college, build a career for myself, and setup the rest of my life. I guess you could say I learned to “stop and smell the roses.” It became alright if I was not playing my best during a tennis match. Taking time to get away from school work and play a few hours of videogames during a stressful week was not blasphemous. I still find myself buying a new videogame during finals week. I put off writing this paper on Monday night because my girlfriend and I had a carton of ice cream in the freezer.

I guess what I am trying to say is take a moment to look around you. When you find something you like, take the time to enjoy it. It will not be there forever.