Losing a Friend: My Grief and Changed Mindset

Its 2:00 p.m. and as I sit here, the respirators, monitors and beeping noises are slowly driving me insane. I am desperately trying to find something that will take my mind off of him. After reading the hospitals visiting procedures innumerable times, I find that my attempts have yielded no encouraging results. Out of the corner of my eye, I can see his cold, lifeless body lying there. In all the times that I had seen him, not once did I ever conceive of ever seeing him like this.

It is difficult to understand how life can sometimes be so callous even to the young. I keep replaying over in my mind the summer days that we had just spent laughing and poking fun of one another. Never could I have imagined we would end up here. Though in life he and I were mere acquaintances, in death he would unquestionably leave a lasting imprint in my own life. Despite all of the academic lessons I had been taught throughout school, nothing had prepared me for this one, one of lifes lessons.

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Last week, my primary dilemma was what I was going to wear the next day. Sometimes it takes something so major, so traumatic to make one realize how trivial our everyday gripes and complaints are. Watching a friend fight to live and to hear him cry, I dont want to die, turned my life and priorities upside down. We as teenagers never discern the idea of dying or going through any kind of true painstaking experience.

Our ideas of trauma consist of breaking up with significant others or not having a date to the prom. We take everyone and everything for granted. Youth can be construed as a sanctuary, misleading us into thinking that tragedy is a far-fetched notion, leaving us unprepared to face any kind of devastating experience. We think we are young and therefore immortal. We have our entire lives ahead of us and never fathom the notion that any one of us will die.

Those were the same ideals I had held, up until last week when I saw my once vivacious friend take his last breath. I know that people die everyday and tragedies occur every hour but it has never hit this close to home. Watching stories of deaths on the evening news is a far cry from experiencing it for ones self. It was not just the fact that he was my age that was frightening, but that he was my friend as well. Ive realized that I have no idea of what eternity really is. Nothing in my life has ever been final. Almost everything I do I can go back on and change my mind, which is why I am having difficulty in coming to grips with the fact that he will never come back.

Though emotionally exhausted, Ive come to understand the brevity of life. It has forced me to grow up and see that not everything in life will always be able to be viewed through rose-colored glasses. Ive learned that for one reason or another, bad things happen and regardless of how much wed like them not to, we have no control over them. Rather than placing blame and wallowing in misery, we should appreciate what we have every moment of everyday.

Growing up is never easy, regardless of where you live or what culture you belong to. For me, Ive accepted that this is just one of the many unfortunate events that I will incur in the course of my life. As I once heard in a song, Life is unpredictable and in the end thats right... I hope youve had the time of your life. I know now what is meant by that and have learned to appreciate people and things while we still have them and not just to eulogize them in death. Wherever it is that I go or whatever it is that I do, I will continue on living each day as if it were the most important day of my life. When deplorable times happen to befall me, I will turn around and know that I have made the most of my circumstances, and that the resulting wisdom and conviction will continue to make me stronger as an individual.