A lot of people I know don't know how to deal with death very well. I grew up going to funerals and having people who I knew as well as didn't know alike dropping like flies right out of this world and my life.
My freshman year of his school my best friend in Concert Choir's sister hung herself in her dorm room closet. They had an open casket and all I can really remember is that they didn't hide the rope burn mark around her neck very well. They stole her last bit of dignity at her own funeral.
Sophomore year at my high school was really rough. First this Junior died in a off-roading accident and then barely more than a week later our school officer was gunned down by her crummy ex-boyfriend in a domestic violence incident. He was a state trooper...you gotta love how CT does their back ground checks on their cops. The lines for their funerals were out the door and they had those pull lines formed like they do in the mall when you're waiting in line to check out a new t-shirt or something.
Then the following year when I was a Junior, a girl I grew up with but wasn't really friends with anymore, her brother committed suicide. Bernie was a pot head and he had a loving family, doting girlfriend and a 2 year old daughter when he drove his car 80 miles an hour into a cement block next to the abandoned children's hospital. I didn't really know Bernie, a lot like I don't really know a lot of people who's funerals I've been to. But his death was the one that affected me most, in the way that causes my inability to cry at funerals anymore. I just sit there stone faced and wondering what these people's lives were like or could have been like. Bernie stole my right to cry at death.
No one died my Senior year of high school, but about a week before I started my freshman year at SSU my 4'9" grandmother whom I loved and cared for more than anyone who had died in the last 4 years of my life passed away in the same manner she had always lived her life; (full of courage, love and happier than anyone I knew).
And this year my Sophomore year of College Wayne Farrington (Senior) committed suicide by sitting in his garage with the car on and the doors closed while blasting his favorite song. His death is more of a mystery to me than anyone else's. I know he had cancer and the Chemotherapy must have been greatly tolling on his young and very fit body but Wayne never struck me as someone who would take the easy way out of life I guess. But that the people you least expect to commit suicide are sometimes just the best at hiding their pain.
I don't really know why I'm talking about this during this 4-8am shift other than I guess that the reason I have such a hard time letting people go even when I know they don't want me, or want to be with me or whatever anymore is because it's not final. At least not to me. Death is final and I never get a say about that, but relationships of all kinds....those I get a say in. So people ask me why I stick around when people treat me like shit and basically kick me around till I break (which takes a lot) it's not because I have no self respect, or because I let people was all over me. It's because I need to feel loved. I need to feel like there is a reason to be here and that there is a reason I am still alive when all these other people are dead. I'm fighting to be loved by anyone, for any reason. I know everyone has a desire and a need to feel and be loved and I'm not saying I'm special, but I am different. I always have been in just about every aspect of life...and love is no different. Death is not something I fear...what I do fear more than anything is never being loved truly just for who I am by someone I can fully commit that same love back to. It's terrifying and sometimes I wonder if because I'm so closed I can't cry at funerals...if that mean's I'll never be open enough to truly accept love in it's most obvious and vulnerable state. I hope not, because I feel no matter who you are or what you have or haven't done, everyone deserves to find their other half.
