#this is really long but it tells the story of how someone close to me
died.

A year and a half since that cold day in December, yet still I remember it
like it was yesterday (I guess to me it always will be).
Rain poured down as if it desperately needed to rid itself of all moisture,
as if the clouds felt they had to wring out all the water that night. That
very night, or else the world would come to a drastic end. To me, that end
seemed to come anyway.
The streets were pools of water, cars spinning out of control. He never had
a chance to grow up. Eighteen. He was only eighteen. Too young to experience
life on his own, yet too old to have it spoon-fed to him. He wanted to be
independent, a rebel. He wanted to say he had done it withough his parents
ever finding out. But they did.

2:00 a.m. A knock on the door. "I'm sorry ma'am," were
the first words out of his mouth. "Your son was killed tonight in a car
accident."
The world came to a halting stop and yet the room still managed to spin.
"You don't know what you're talking about... my boy... my
boy, he's at a friend's house!"
Frantically, she ran up the stairs... he was gone. Nowhere to be found.
It's over. He was identified. It was really him. A best firend to so
many... his life stolen away. I heard the next day. Full of disbelief I
acted as if I never heard the words. "Lies... this school is so full of
lies... it's only a nasty rumor, you know how that is..." was my
reply to the news that soon became a reality to me shortly after.

I saw him, lying still, no movement. Although I could have sworn that at any
moment he was just going to rise up out of the baby blue bed that he rested
on and bring peace to a room full of grief. It didn't even look like
him. Too long I glared at him, questions running through my mind like a
freight train at a speed too fast to comprehend. "God, he was just a
child. How could a life so young be stolen away so quickly?" No reply.
I got infuriated with God. He was a good kid, he just made a few bad
choices. I never thought they were severe enough to be punishable by death.

The next day I witnessed the casket that held the breathless body of my dear
friend lower into the earth. Tears poured down my face like rain out of
heaven. It was so cold that day. I could feel the salty droplets dry hard on
my face. Forty degrees.
I wondered for so long about the life of my friend, I pondered this question
so many times: why should the innocent die while the murderers run free? How
come he never got to fulfill the perfect plan we all promised? It has taken
me this year and a half to understand the loss of my friend. It has taken me
this long to realize that his plan was played out.

It is all summed up in this one word that often brings shudders to the bones
of so many: LESSONS. His death was a lesson to all that he left behind. Life
is fragile. There is no way that we can control who lives and who dies; all
we can do is have faith that we will get through it. Good and bad are
obvious, but sometimes not so obvious. Right and wrong choices can determine
life or death.

So it's time for us to wake up, mourn no more. Time will heal our
broken hearts. And one day, there will be no more tears to cry.
 
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