In my last post, I stated that I had a really good idea for a next post...which I do...but I am going to have to put it on the back burner again because I've been inspired to discuss another subject...death.
I am never too comfortable discussing this subject, I don't think most people are. Alas, I feel compelled to write about it this morning. Over the weekend I phoned a friend to give him my regular weekly update and before I had time to say much more than hello, he informed me that his step father had passed away two days ago. Whenever someone tells me about dying 9 times out of ten I get this funny tingly feeling in my stomach. What I had planned to talk to him about immediately became frivolous and I was so relieved I hadn't brought it up. I am still searching to find the right thing to say to someone when they tell me some one close to them has died. "I'm so sorry to hear that" is pretty much what I always say. I am definitely willing to deviate from that phrase though...truth be told I really don't like it much...but somehow it is better than saying nothing at all or something a little bit too real like "that sucks". At the end of the day it is still very generic though this "i'm so sorry to hear that"...I know that what I say is probably not going to make the other person feel much better either way but I don't want to come off as not caring either...because I usually do. I guess it is just one of those awkward moments in life that one can never get rid of. I will continue to pray for my friend and his family though...nothing awkward about that.
The sudden death of my friend's stepdad along with the recent passing of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes has me thinking about what role death has played in my own life and how I've managed to cope. Like Shaft and Mr. Mac, both of my grandfathers died relatively early in the grand scheme of things. They were only in their 60s. My mother's father died too early for me to have any really good memories of him...besides this home video of him celebrating Christmas with me when I was a baby. But from the memories others have shared with me, I've come to know him as a loving man who cared deeply for his family and loved to laugh and have a good time. Another interesting thing about him was that he used to be a sharecropper when he was younger and ended up losing his hand in a farming accident. I often think what type of courage it must have taken for him to accept such a life-altering handicapp...but he did it happily. He and my mother were extremely close and because of her I am able to know him and miss him too.
My Pop-pop, my dad's father, passed when I was a little older so I have a lot more memories of him. He was tall with light eyes and always made sure there were strawberry sugar wafers in his cookie jar for me. I was really shy as I child but he was one of the people who I actually felt comfortable talking to. Right before he died, me and my dad were at the hospital visiting him. I told him I was planning to draw him a picture and I would bring it with me the next time I came. He seemed pretty excited about this so I went home and immediately began slaving away at this landscape picture using all of my best crayons and markers. He was gone the next day. As I was spending time with my family mourning the loss, all I could think to say was " I drew Pop-pop this really nice picture yesterday, but then he went and died...now I can't even give it to him". Obviously I was too young to comprehend what was really going on, and more than anything else I was disappointed that he hadn't been there to see my picture in time. Unfortunately I can't remember what ever happened to the drawing but hopefully he was still able to enjoy it up there in heaven.
Besides these two people, I have yet to have anyone extremely close to me pass...other than my friend April from college. Some of you reading this may know her too. We met freshman year, at the time I had NO friends and was still very much trying to adapt to my new enviroment. Orientation activities were under way and we were all on break for lunch. I remember grabbing my food and looking around thinking..."this is so embarrasing, I have no friends and no where to sit" ***side-note, by my senior year...I had a totally different outlook on the dinning hall, it was very much an eat and run and experience, the less talking the better, I had come to the realization of how much valuable study time I could gain this way*** anyhoo, I took it upon myself to sit with April at Cooper (a dining hall on Douglass) that very first day of orientation. She was also alone so I saw this as an opportunity to strike up conversation and possibly make a friend. Long story short, she was not particularly friendly, lol. I later came to realize that April was not your typical "friendly" person. She wasn't bubbly, and it took me awhile to catch on to her sense of humor...but once I did, I found her hilarious!! Back to our first encounter, as I was doing my best to tell April about myself and find out more about her, she calmly sat at the other side of the table eating her food, mostly nodding, her verbal responses short...much shorter than I felt comfortable with. Funny who you end up making friends with isn't it? Who knew that that would be the first of many meals we would share together at Rutgers, I certainly didn't. April was a pharmacy student and was not as beat to go to parties as me and my other friends were but we still had some really memorable times with her, my favorite being when we all went to the West Indian Labor Day Parade in New York. April, along with a few other members of my crew at the time, were all Jamaican so they were all really excited for the day. Like I said, April was not really the type of person to get excited over anything so I was pleasantly surprised to see how happy and full of life she was that day...more excited than me and the rest of my friends by far!!!!! She actually left us amidst the crowd to go flag-wave and look for Elephant Man...truth be told we actually lost her for awhile and ended up getting pretty upset with her...her excuse was, "You guys were walking too slow".
The last time I saw April was in the Spring of 2006. I was walking to catch the F bus to go downtown...and this car drives past me and starts beeping. New Brunwick is a weird place so I just figured it was some old perv and kept it moving. When I got to the light and was getting ready to cross the street someone called my name...I looked, and it was April!!!! She had a new car!!!!! She told me to get in and ended up taking me to my destination. We had a nice conversation, it was mostly me telling her how cute her car was...but I could tell she was happy to receive the compliments. I invited her to a party we were having later that night for one of our friends. It was a busy semester and we had not spent much time together at all so I insisted she be there. We had a really good time that night laughing, drinking...DANCING...April had some crazy dances! lol! Anyway, that was the last time I saw her. She passed away that summer and my friends and I found ourselves devasted and full of tears just a few short months later. It was a really hard funeral for all of us, I remember having such a bad headache afterwards. Her death is still something that is hard to think about...sometimes it is just easier to pretend that I don't see her anymore because we both graduated and live too far from one another to really keep in touch. Still, I can't help but feel that her life was cut short, she was going to do big things some day I know it. In closing, my faith in God is really what I lean on to make sense of a person's life and when it is time for it to end. Faith, coupled with time anyway.... ...Time heals all wounds is how the saying goes...but in the case of death I'd say it's more or less like a band-aid. When someone you really care for dies, I do not think that wound every TRULY heals...it is something we wear with us as long as we continue to walk across this Earth. Time will eventually ease the pain...but the scar never fades; a person makes impressions that last forever.
I am never too comfortable discussing this subject, I don't think most people are. Alas, I feel compelled to write about it this morning. Over the weekend I phoned a friend to give him my regular weekly update and before I had time to say much more than hello, he informed me that his step father had passed away two days ago. Whenever someone tells me about dying 9 times out of ten I get this funny tingly feeling in my stomach. What I had planned to talk to him about immediately became frivolous and I was so relieved I hadn't brought it up. I am still searching to find the right thing to say to someone when they tell me some one close to them has died. "I'm so sorry to hear that" is pretty much what I always say. I am definitely willing to deviate from that phrase though...truth be told I really don't like it much...but somehow it is better than saying nothing at all or something a little bit too real like "that sucks". At the end of the day it is still very generic though this "i'm so sorry to hear that"...I know that what I say is probably not going to make the other person feel much better either way but I don't want to come off as not caring either...because I usually do. I guess it is just one of those awkward moments in life that one can never get rid of. I will continue to pray for my friend and his family though...nothing awkward about that.
The sudden death of my friend's stepdad along with the recent passing of Bernie Mac and Isaac Hayes has me thinking about what role death has played in my own life and how I've managed to cope. Like Shaft and Mr. Mac, both of my grandfathers died relatively early in the grand scheme of things. They were only in their 60s. My mother's father died too early for me to have any really good memories of him...besides this home video of him celebrating Christmas with me when I was a baby. But from the memories others have shared with me, I've come to know him as a loving man who cared deeply for his family and loved to laugh and have a good time. Another interesting thing about him was that he used to be a sharecropper when he was younger and ended up losing his hand in a farming accident. I often think what type of courage it must have taken for him to accept such a life-altering handicapp...but he did it happily. He and my mother were extremely close and because of her I am able to know him and miss him too.
My Pop-pop, my dad's father, passed when I was a little older so I have a lot more memories of him. He was tall with light eyes and always made sure there were strawberry sugar wafers in his cookie jar for me. I was really shy as I child but he was one of the people who I actually felt comfortable talking to. Right before he died, me and my dad were at the hospital visiting him. I told him I was planning to draw him a picture and I would bring it with me the next time I came. He seemed pretty excited about this so I went home and immediately began slaving away at this landscape picture using all of my best crayons and markers. He was gone the next day. As I was spending time with my family mourning the loss, all I could think to say was " I drew Pop-pop this really nice picture yesterday, but then he went and died...now I can't even give it to him". Obviously I was too young to comprehend what was really going on, and more than anything else I was disappointed that he hadn't been there to see my picture in time. Unfortunately I can't remember what ever happened to the drawing but hopefully he was still able to enjoy it up there in heaven.
Besides these two people, I have yet to have anyone extremely close to me pass...other than my friend April from college. Some of you reading this may know her too. We met freshman year, at the time I had NO friends and was still very much trying to adapt to my new enviroment. Orientation activities were under way and we were all on break for lunch. I remember grabbing my food and looking around thinking..."this is so embarrasing, I have no friends and no where to sit" ***side-note, by my senior year...I had a totally different outlook on the dinning hall, it was very much an eat and run and experience, the less talking the better, I had come to the realization of how much valuable study time I could gain this way*** anyhoo, I took it upon myself to sit with April at Cooper (a dining hall on Douglass) that very first day of orientation. She was also alone so I saw this as an opportunity to strike up conversation and possibly make a friend. Long story short, she was not particularly friendly, lol. I later came to realize that April was not your typical "friendly" person. She wasn't bubbly, and it took me awhile to catch on to her sense of humor...but once I did, I found her hilarious!! Back to our first encounter, as I was doing my best to tell April about myself and find out more about her, she calmly sat at the other side of the table eating her food, mostly nodding, her verbal responses short...much shorter than I felt comfortable with. Funny who you end up making friends with isn't it? Who knew that that would be the first of many meals we would share together at Rutgers, I certainly didn't. April was a pharmacy student and was not as beat to go to parties as me and my other friends were but we still had some really memorable times with her, my favorite being when we all went to the West Indian Labor Day Parade in New York. April, along with a few other members of my crew at the time, were all Jamaican so they were all really excited for the day. Like I said, April was not really the type of person to get excited over anything so I was pleasantly surprised to see how happy and full of life she was that day...more excited than me and the rest of my friends by far!!!!! She actually left us amidst the crowd to go flag-wave and look for Elephant Man...truth be told we actually lost her for awhile and ended up getting pretty upset with her...her excuse was, "You guys were walking too slow".
The last time I saw April was in the Spring of 2006. I was walking to catch the F bus to go downtown...and this car drives past me and starts beeping. New Brunwick is a weird place so I just figured it was some old perv and kept it moving. When I got to the light and was getting ready to cross the street someone called my name...I looked, and it was April!!!! She had a new car!!!!! She told me to get in and ended up taking me to my destination. We had a nice conversation, it was mostly me telling her how cute her car was...but I could tell she was happy to receive the compliments. I invited her to a party we were having later that night for one of our friends. It was a busy semester and we had not spent much time together at all so I insisted she be there. We had a really good time that night laughing, drinking...DANCING...April had some crazy dances! lol! Anyway, that was the last time I saw her. She passed away that summer and my friends and I found ourselves devasted and full of tears just a few short months later. It was a really hard funeral for all of us, I remember having such a bad headache afterwards. Her death is still something that is hard to think about...sometimes it is just easier to pretend that I don't see her anymore because we both graduated and live too far from one another to really keep in touch. Still, I can't help but feel that her life was cut short, she was going to do big things some day I know it. In closing, my faith in God is really what I lean on to make sense of a person's life and when it is time for it to end. Faith, coupled with time anyway.... ...Time heals all wounds is how the saying goes...but in the case of death I'd say it's more or less like a band-aid. When someone you really care for dies, I do not think that wound every TRULY heals...it is something we wear with us as long as we continue to walk across this Earth. Time will eventually ease the pain...but the scar never fades; a person makes impressions that last forever.
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