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I’ve mentioned that I hate death. HATE. I realize this is not an uncommon reaction, but I *actively* hate death, several times a day. I wish I wouldn’t dwell on something that upsets me so much. That’s just dumb.
NOT helping is the news that one of my brother’s high school friends died in a car crash* earlier this week. Nicholas came back from school to be at her funeral this morning, as did about half of his graduating class, plus friends from two other schools she attended—about a thousand people in all.
I’ve never been to a funeral, which I think is strange for someone my age. Everyone I know well enough to say goodbye to is still alive**. I’m horribly terrified of funerals, mostly because I know I would be a huge sobbing mess. I cry easily. I don’t mind it so much when I’m around people I’m comfortable with, but in public it’s just embarrassing***. I could show up at the funeral of a total stranger, and I would be guaranteed to dissolve into puffy, snotty tears as soon as anyone began to speak.
I had never even met this girl, and I could still barely keep my shit together just listening to Nicholas talk about her. I was about to make fun of him for a golf cap hanging from his rearview mirror, until he told me that Brittany had always liked that cap and would steal it from him whenever he wore it. In fact, she was wearing it in a bunch of the pictures from the slideshow this morning.
That makes me so sad I want to cry a lot, then punch things, then hug everyone I know. I’ve cried a lot already today, and in lieu of punching things, I think I’ll go to bed.
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* She somehow lost control of her car on the freeway and drove onto the wrong side of the road. Just as she seemed to have regained control and began to steer back across the median, an oncoming vehicle hit her driver’s side door, killing her instantly. She had just gotten her wisdom teeth removed an hour or two earlier; the drugs involved in that were likely a contributing factor.
** With the exception of my maternal grandmother, who died in the Netherlands seven or eight years ago. I only saw her for an afternoon or so every other year, we didn’t really speak the same language, and the funeral was of course an ocean away, so I didn’t go.
*** As those sorts of people are few and far between, embarrassment and frustration often rule the day.
Tags: miscellany