Learning How to Live

My biggest fear used to be death. I mean, how was I not supposed to be afraid of it? I’m just supposed to go through this life thinking that everything is the way that it is, but there’s this abrupt end? But when exactly is that end? Is it now? Is it later? And what happens after death? Is it just nothingness or is it a whole new world? Or do we start all over as a baby and go on to a new life?

Whenever I mention that one of my best friends died last year, I can sense the tone and the atmosphere of the room almost instantly change around me. I can tell that the person that I’m talking to has a million questions that he or she wants answers to. However, they don’t know how to go about asking them. Sometimes, they just nod their head and look down. Sometimes, they say that they’re sorry for my loss and look around until I break the silence. Or sometimes, they even ask me questions like how my friend died to keep me talking. But I’ll tell you the story. I’ll tell you who he was and how he died because I know you want to know just like everybody else does.

His name was Jack. He had tan skin, dark brown hair that was nearly black in a buzz cut. He was short (for an eighteen year old), maybe around 5 '5”, which I constantly teased him about, despite being four inches shorter, myself. He had the purest golden brown eyes and the brightest smile which is why I’m an absolute sucker for brown eyes. He was older than me, even though I was in the grade above him, simply because his mom kept him in pre-school longer. I was about to graduate in a little over a week, but Jack had another year to go. Jack and I became best friends in middle school. I loved him. Not in an I-want-to-marry-him kind of way, but the way that I wanted him in my life forever. I imagined him being like an uncle to my future kids. We fought like siblings. We had the whole cliche pact that if we both weren’t married by thirty-five, we would marry each other. We shook on it and everything. (Now that I’m re-reading this at twenty six years old, thirty-five was a wildly young age to decide on marrying each other for a pact.)

On May 3, 2017, Jack started on a one hundred mile bike trip. It was on his bucket list and he was planning for the next triathlon that he was going to do. He was very athletic, which made sense since we met each other through swim classes, but he ran and biked, which was far more than I did. I learned to ride a bike when I was just a kid, but after not riding one for over a decade, I just seemed to forget how to do it. Jack promised that he would teach me after the triathlon so that we could sign up for the next one together. On May 5th, he got to the ninety-five mile mark when he and his friend stopped at the corner of the road to drink some water. A driver quickly cut the curb and ran into him. I specifically remember telling him that morning that he only had a little over 30 miles left before he’d be home for our movie night. We had a movie night once a month where we would eat pizza from Little Caesar’s (specifically a square pizza) and watch a scary movie. That night, hours after Jack was supposed to be at my house, I got a call from his sister telling me to come to the hospital.

I remember getting that phone call when I was sitting at my kitchen island with a pizza that was already cool and popcorn that had been popped three hours ago. After that moment, all that I can remember is running out of the house and speeding to Mercy Hospital in St. Louis. When I got there and found out what floor he was on, they wouldn’t even let me in the room. The doctors had the visitation open to family only because Jack was in such a critical state. Jack’s sister came out to the waiting room to tell me what was happening every ten minutes just so I would know how he was. I could barely understand the words that she was saying. Swelling in the brain…brain bleed…dislocated elbow…punctured lung. All I knew was that he was intubated and in the ICU.

I was in that damn hospital every day. I had begged the doctors to let me see my best friend, even if it was just for a second. But, every day, I’d get the same shake of the head and the flick of the wrist that was pointing me back to the waiting room. I sat in the same stupid seat in the waiting room, cursing them under my breath. I had just wanted to see my best friend and they had to cut me off from him. About three weeks later, the doctors finally let me stand outside the door, but they still wouldn’t let me inside. I broke down in the waiting room hours later because I knew that the following day I had to move halfway across the country and I had no closure.

On June 9, 2017, I got a call from Jack’s sister just like every other day in order to get an update on his condition, but today felt different. I remember the silence of the phone call and the struggle of her words that were spilling out of her mouth. He wasn’t strong enough. He couldn’t beat it. The bleeding was overpowering him and the pain was just too much. I broke down in my room, crying, but I was more angry than sad because of the fact that I was never allowed to see him and say goodbye.

The months that followed Jack’s death were full of raw grief. I remember that period of time quite well. The visitation and the funeral I attended through video call because I simply couldn’t get there. Every time I went to the pool that summer, I would try not to cry. Day after day, it was the same. But sometimes, those tears mixed with the chlorine. I could barely eat. I couldn’t sleep. It was the hardest time I’ve ever been through. And, of course, as time went on, life did, too. But you never forget. You’ll never be the same. There are things in life that are so traumatic that you just can’t go through them without changing. And I’ve learned many lessons with the loss of my best friend.

1. Grief is a crushing emotion.

I screamed at Jack as I chased him around the island. He ran in the kitchen, holding my phone and I stopped my running and crossed my arms. I knew my puppy dog eyes wouldn’t work on him and he kept scrolling on my phone. But, I knew the one thing that Jack couldn’t resist. Salt and Vinegar chips. I opened up the pantry door and I found a bag and turned around and shook it in front of him like it was a bag of treats in front of a dog. Instantly, he reached for the chips, but I didn’t let him have it without a fair trade. My phone for the bag of chips.

When I lost Jack, it was the first time that I felt pain that was so harsh. I guess that makes me lucky that it took me seventeen years to feel such pain. Sure, I had been through a lot as a teenager and I had a lot of trauma, but I was amazed at how long and how different this sorry lasted. There were periods of sadness and the uncontrollable tears. Then there was the irritability and the lack of tears. Sometimes I needed to be with people and sometimes I needed to be alone. Sometimes I needed courage from others to help me keep going and sometimes I needed to push everyone away. But, no matter the pain, I couldn’t forget the happy moments I had with him.

2. When someone mentions their pain, they want to talk about it.

I remember there was a period of time that I wasn’t allowed to sit on Jack’s bed. I had to sit on the floor while he sat on the bed because his girlfriend at the time was very strict. Even though Jack and I never were interested in each other, his girlfriend, Maggie, never believed that and assumed I was always trying to break up their relationship. I never liked her simply because she was jealous and controlling so I remember walking out of one of our hang outs because I couldn’t hear him complaining about her.

Most times, when people don’t know what to say while talking to someone who is dealing with pain, it’s because they don’t want to hurt our feelings. But, in grieving myself, I realized a secret. It might not help everyone, but it sure as hell helped me. When I mentioned my best friend’s death, I felt like I just wanted to talk about it with others and if I didn’t want to talk about him, I wouldn’t have mentioned him at all. Or, I would have changed the subject if they brought it up. I won’t ever forget the time that I walked away from Jack when he was trying to open up about his relationship problems to me. I should have sat there and listened to him complain about his girl problems. I should have sat there and let him talk to me because I might have been able to help him through his issues. So, if someone in pain brings up their grief, talk with them about it because they’re probably just looking for some support. They could easily refrain from bringing it up, but they didn’t. Don’t be scared to embark on that journey with them.

3. Everything will pass.

I experienced a lot of trauma with an ex boyfriend. I had dated this boy for about five years and dealt with years of infidelity, emotional abuse, verbal abuse, and the final straw was physical abuse. But Jack was there through everything. He had tried to talk me out of the relationship for years but I was naive and in love and felt like I could change him. A week after I finally left the toxic relationship that I was in, Jack tried his best to get me to go out with him and do something to get my mind off of my ex. I remember him driving over to my house to do the little things that we always used to do together. We used to go to abandoned places together and make up little stories like we were detectives trying to solve a case. The amount of times that we’d put on face accents and pretend we were looking for a missing person is too many to count on one hand.

You can’t let grief and trauma get in your way. Everything will pass and life will eventually go on. Whether we spend our twenty four hour day in bed crying about the past or whether we spend it by being productive, the next set of twenty four hours comes around and the sun rises and sets yet again. Life goes on. This doesn’t mean that we have to forget about the past, but it does mean that we have much more than just the past. We have the present and we have the future. I will never forget the trauma that I’ve been through because it’s made me find my self worth. I don’t deserve to be with someone who will treat me the way that my ex did. I don’t deserve to be belittled and demeaned. I deserve to feel free, the way that Jack made me feel. And even though I’m leaving his physical body in the past, I’m bringing him with me in the present and to the future.

4. Life is precious.

One fall I convinced my mom to let me stay with Jack’s family for Thanksgiving since my parents were getting divorced and she wanted to go see my family halfway across the country. During that week, I felt a different kind of love than I had felt in a long time. You know when you have guests over and your parents will go out of their way to clean the house and make food you usually don’t eat because it’s ‘special’ and the guests need to feel important? Well, I was that guest. I had been over at Jack’s house multiple times for our monthly movie nights or just hanging out before swim practice, but staying over for a week was almost like I was a part of the family. I know that my mother and my father (despite my father stepping out on us) loved me, but being in a household with three children and two parents that loved each other, I was able to experience something that I hadn’t been able to experience before.

I remember after losing Jack, that I held my friends and family closer than before. I made sure to show how much I cared about them. I put my work and extracurricular activities down if they wanted to talk. I picked up the phone if they called instead of letting it ring out. I developed an understanding of each person that I talked to, whether it was a stranger or even my mother. (I still do that to this day. Yes, it's been seven years since I wrote this paper originally, but I still hold people that I care about very close to the heart. I don’t usually reach out to people to vent or to talk about my problems, but I will do everything in my power to listen to someone else’s struggles because I know how valuable it is to just have someone listen to you talk about what you’re going through.) I want to be able to treat everyone I meet with respect because you never know what they might be going through and if they are grieving.

5. We are not in full control of our lives.

Jack and I were practicing interval training when it came to running. We were going to sign up for a triathlon in a month or two, but he was more focused on the one he was going to compete in in a few weeks. I had just gotten over the flu and hadn’t been training, but Jack was more focused on trying to beat his previous time of 1:13:37, that he wasn’t focused on me at all. Halfway through, I had to stop at the side and take a breather. I was going to get back up in a minute, but I felt a hand on my back. I remember being confused, because he was so excited to beat his time, so I tried to encourage him to run on, but he refused because he didn’t want to do it without me.

We have hopes and dreams and goals. All of those are amazing things and planning our lives out is wise, but no matter how hard we work at that, there are just some things that we can’t control. When Jack died, I realized that there were things that were impossible to change. Before he passed, I felt like there was always a way for something. If I wanted to buy some shoes, all I had to do was mow my neighbor’s lawn and he’d give me a crisp fifty dollar bill. If I got into an argument with my mom, I had to make an effort to communicate with her. But when Jack died, I realized that no matter what I did, I couldn’t bring him back. I felt so helpless and vulnerable. And to me, that was important. It was important to feel things that I wasn’t comfortable with.

6. Old memories are to be held onto.

Jack was the artist of his family. He was always doodling and honestly, I was very jealous of his creativity. (I was never really into arts and crafts back then, but now that I’m much older, I find doodling, painting, and craft making to be very therapeutic.) Jack had tried to teach me to draw and I remember sitting with him in his backyard with a notepad and attempting to draw. Anything that I would make, he would compliment. I would never take my artwork home, but I’d always give it to him and he’d hang it up on the fridge with a magnet or on his mirror.

The day after I moved into my dorm, freshman year, I got an email saying that I had a letter to be picked up. So, I walked to the post office and got my letter. It was from Jack’s sister. I remember walking back to the dorm room thinking of what it would have been about. I sat on my bed and took a deep breath before opening the letter. Inside was a big piece of paper and a small note. On the little note was written, ‘Found this in Jack’s dresser drawer. I thought you might want to read this.’ I put the little paper to the side and started reading the folded up handwritten letter. I remember crying so hard that I couldn’t breathe. But, I’ll read you the letter. I know you’re begging to know what was on that poorly scribed letter.

Dear Lolo,

Happy graduation! Happy birthday! Happy move-in day! I wanted to write three individual letters, but I figured I’d write one big letter. I don’t know how much postage is and my sister said I was doing too much by writing multiple letters. I miss you already (Seriously, you’re my only friend pls come back because I don’t know what to do w/o you here). I’m truly exaggerating, I’m writing this in April and you’re still here, but I’m in my feels and I need to get it from pen to paper. This move is going to do nothing to our friendship. I mean, come on, we’re best friends and I know I can call you whenever with all of my problems and you’ll answer. I love you, Lo. I’m so grateful that I can call you my best friend.

I’m going to miss being able to go over to your house and scavenge through your pantry for salt and vinegar chips because my mom doesn’t feed me. I’m going to miss racing you at swim practice every day. I’m going to miss your stupid face every time my family roasts me. I’m going to miss you. I remember when we met back when I was like 10. Dude, we were so ugly then. Especially you. Don’t kill me, pls. If it makes you feel better, you glew up. Is it glew? Glowed? What’s the right word for that? I know if you were right here when I said that, you’d roll your eyes and complain in your stupid whiney voice. You know exactly what voice I’m talking about.

There’s so much I want to say, but I should keep it semi-short or I’m sure I’ll bore you to death. Just to get a little sentimental, I should say that I have a lot of regrets. I regret all of our arguments. I regret bailing on you for reasons that start with an M (and I won’t elaborate on whom that is). One of my biggest regrets might have been not giving us a chance. I know we’re too alike and things probably would have never worked out, but I do wish I took the time to pursue something with you. But I was honestly scared to ruin things.

I hope when you go off to school, you’ll find a best friend who will treat you the way I do. I hope you can find someone who will have monthly scary movie nights with you. I hope your new best friend can talk to you for hours on end about vines.

With love,

Jack

Despite how emotional the letter was, I was very thankful that Jack’s sister sent it to me. I hadn’t gotten to say goodbye, but this letter gave me some closure. The last time I talked to him was the morning of the accident when we were talking about pizza toppings. I said I would see him soon. At least that’s what I thought. This letter was like the goodbye I didn’t get.

7. Friendship is forever.

When Jack died, I didn’t lose my friend. I just had to say goodbye to him. I had to change my state of mind and alter my thinking about missing him forever. Just because we weren’t talking on a daily basis, doesn’t mean that our friendship is over. I still love him. I still talk to him like I see him every day. I care for his family and keep in touch with them. Every time I don’t know what to do, I think about him and wonder what he would do in the situation. When I think about him, the conversations we had when he was here and the secrets we shared, it makes me inspired and excited to push forward to make him proud.

8. It’s important to think about life and death.

I actually remember talking to Jack about death a lot. We often asked each other what we’d do on the off chance that one of us were to die. We both agreed that we’d be sad but we wanted each other to be happy and not to dwell on it.

The last thing I heard was to push my fear behind me. Sure, I’m still scared to death. But our days are numbered here. It can be scary to let your mind wander to death and nobody enjoys thinking about when we’re going to die, but it’s important to think about. When we think about death, we also think about life and it helps us decide how to live. It makes us think about what comes after death and what kind of legacy we want to leave behind. Jack’s death did a number on me. It caused pain. But, it also caused me to fill my heart with wisdom. I’ve learned so much from this experience and for that I am forever grateful. I would never wish this pain among anybody else, but losing someone that was this important to me did help shape me into the person that I am today.

(Seven years later, as I read this, there are a lot of things that I do on a daily basis that I know are in response to Jack’s death. My generosity, my ability to care for others, the way I don’t take things seriously, my appreciation for immature comedy, and the way that I carry myself and talk to others all comes from Jack. To Jack, if you’re reading this, I know you’ll kill me for using the name Jack as your alias simply because we would use that name as a character we created to imitate people of my pasty white culture. But really, I just wanted to thank you for being there for me in spirit when I needed you the most. I know you’re somewhere out there, shaking your head at the ridiculous things that I’ve written in this paper or laughing at the fact that I’m here editing it yet again seven years later. But either way, I wish I could have laughed with you one more time. I wish I could have heard you tell me how annoying I am just one more time. We’ve shared great memories together and I don’t know who’s going to come knocking on my door now asking me to trim their hair, or who’s going to FaceTime me before school with a million different outfit options because you don’t know which shirt will go with those weird jeans you love to wear. I don’t know who’s going to try to race me on foot from school just to beat me while I’m fighting traffic, just to surprise me in my kitchen with a sandwich and a bag of salt and vinegar chips in hand that you made from my pantry. I cherish every moment that I got to spend with you. It’s been a rough road without you buddy, but I know that you’re in a better place now. I love you more than you will ever know. You’re my best friend, forever and always. Sometimes, I still can’t imagine living life without you, but June 9, 2017 was the day that I had to learn how.)