The title of this blog is a dedication to a man I met only once who I found out recently died in a car accident with a parked semi-truck. This is the name of the sports blog that he was editor in chief for. It's really sad.
I received an invite a few day ago on Facebook from this guy to some sort of event. I never read the event right away. Half the time I'm just trying to get the notification symbol to not be red anymore. So like most events it went into hiding until I was bored at work and needed to do something other than watch the same commercials all day. Yesterday, I began browsing through my events and came across his and when I read it, it made little sense to me. "Celebration of Life service?" I assumed it was a religious gathering of sorts and when I clicked on the event to see more, I realized the life being celebrated was the one who added me. He was dead. Someone (I later found out was his mother) was able to use his account to invite all of his friends to his wake. I didn't know how to feel. We talk and post and write as if we will be here forever. As if we all will live well into our 90's....
I only met the guy once. He spoke in the third person and used his own name as a catch phrase often times. I thought he was full of himself, but it was also charming...I didn't know until recently that he had his hand in so many things: I believe he was a substitute teacher, he trained people at a gym and on the track, he wrote for a sports blog, hell, was editor of it....He did a lot and updated a lot and was traveling a lot and I say all this to say....That for some reason, even though I didn't know him well, his passing is bothering me.
Am I doing enough in my life right now that if I were to suddenly pass away I had anything to show for it? believe it or not, we all want to be remembered in some way. Death doesn't often allow you the time to figure out it's about to happened for you to get your life in order...Much like this guy, it is sudden and without warning. The fact that his event page has 250 people saying they will be there says something about how many lives he has touched. I can not say I've done that much in my 25 years of life... how depressing...
When I read about what happened I was taking a break at work from the mundane. I thought about it for the rest of the day in little spurts; how sad of a story it was. He was in the passenger seat and they ran right underneath the truck at a high speed....the driver survived, but barely. Before going to bed a women outside was screaming the name of someone over and over again. I rolled my eyes and thought, eventually she'll get tired and leave, or the police will chase her off. But at 3 a.m. this morning I was awakened by the hoarse voice of the women from crying out all night. This time the police did show up and I finally looked out the window and saw a very upset woman and at least eight officers, seven of which were standing around, joking, and talking as if they were not responding to a call....from my window. It looked as if she was in desperate search for her lost teddy bear, and the police we're just going through the motions of writing down the information so they could leave and get back to the real work...
I wrote all this because seeing her--oily hair, dirty sneakers, ripped pants--reminded me of him. She reminded me of life in general. Calling out trying to get someone to take her seriously about what ever it is she has to say...but everyone shrugging her off going about business as if she will always be. Life is dirty and desperate, but it is also beautiful in it's own way. my Facebook friend's life is over and like that, the world turns. For me, it's a scary thought. We dismiss life so easily as an ongoing entity. We have nothing but time. Every time I talk to someone about how I feel like I'm not doing enough, I'm told, "How old are you? 20-something?? You have time!" But do I really? I believe I do and so does everyone else, but we really don't know. This event has caused me to look at what I have done so far in my life and I feel like I've done close to nothing. My friend and I were the same age and he had a hand in so many things and helped so many people....Maybe that was his main purpose in life, but what is mine?
Today his body will be on view at one of the funeral homes in California where I believe he lived. Today is also--according to Facebook-- his birthday. It's not really his birthday. His birthday is in June. What a little trickster he was.
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