With my birthday this week and my ten year high school reunion next week, I have been thinking about the past.
I was flipping through my high school yearbook when I came across the memorial pages for the two students that died my senior year. Every school has a couple of kids who, for whatever reason, don't make it to graduation. There are car accidents, the "hey look at me" accidents and well, there's always murder. My high school has been no stranger to the sudden deaths of students. My senior year we lost two. Kenny Jarvis was killed in an auto accident involving another student, and Melanie Richey was murdered the summer before our senior year began.
When a student dies in an accident, you recoil at the horror, cry at the funeral and someday, somehow you begin to remember good things. When a child is murdered, it becomes very difficult to get beyond the anger, resentment and grief to find the wonderful memories.
When the complete horror story of Melanie's murder was told, we all realized that we had been sharing lockers, football games and walks in the common area with murderers. These were not the guys that 'looked strange'. These were the cute wrestler from out of town, the guy that we had gone to school with since middle school, and the guy from our rival school. We never got the heebie-jeebies from these boys; and we all realized how scary that fact was.
This was not meant to be a rehashing of the horrors of Melanie's murder, or a tome on the dangers of young people driving; it was meant as a warning.
School has just started. For some, it is the beginning of four years in high school, for others it is the end of an era. Please, please be careful. Here are a few things I wish someone had told me when I was in school.
:Your parents will not kill you for being late, so don't drive like Dale to meet curfew.
:Taking drugs, even for the first time can kill you.
:Drinking can kill you in many ways, and they all hurt.
:If something looks wrong, feels wrong, smells wrong; it usually is wrong.
:Burying your friends before graduation sucks.
:Taking drugs, even for the first time can kill you.
:Drinking can kill you in many ways, and they all hurt.
:If something looks wrong, feels wrong, smells wrong; it usually is wrong.
:Burying your friends before graduation sucks.
~Sarah
Written in 2005
From time to time I think about Melanie, and exactly why I randomly ended up here. Not so much because we were friends, we really werent... but that whole thing was just so messed up that I dont think anyone wasnt affected by it in some way. Its been so long and so many people have come and gone from my life and I forget most of them but I honestly think I will always remember her name. Gone but not forgotten.
ReplyDeleteDo you know what happened with her family? Can't imagine the horror her parents must have suffered.
ReplyDeleteSee my post below
DeleteI am her cousin, our Mothers are sisters. She and I were born less than a year apart.
ReplyDeleteHer parents and sister have done as well as can be expected in regards to picking up the pieces and accepting that life moves on. Not a day goes by that she isn’t missed or thought about. It will always be a devastating event that forever changed the entire family. However as time moves on , the grief comes in smaller and smaller waves and you learn to embrace and accept it as an old friend that comes to visit out of the blue and unexpectedly sometimes. You take a moment to cry and then you remember that life waits for no one. So you get back up, dust yourself off and keep living.
Thank you for sharing this. So heartbreaking and senseless. Your words are beautiful, however. They reminded me of something I read on grief a while back by the comedian Alyssa Limperis:
ReplyDelete"A note on grief. It is long and complicated and when you are doing dishes and the world pauses, it doesn’t matter how many years have passed, how many stages you’ve been through, you are frozen, staring at your broken heart, your piece of you that’s gone and it hurts like it was yesterday. It both passes & stays. It both brushes and assaults you. It feels like a bottle that is inside of you waiting to fill up and overflow. When I am not grieving I am aware of it, aware that it is temporary and that like a wave, it will come back to shore when my back is turned to it. And it will knock me underwater. Flailing, gasping, weeping, yearning for it to go back."
I hope. the time between those moments continue to lengthen for your family.