Growing up in rural Canada, you learn from a young age that death is always close. From the time you’re a child, you learn to become one with it, and realize that you will come to know it better than you know some of your friends. I moved around from city-to-city as a child while my single mother attended college and then university. Finally, at the age of nine, we settled down in the place that I still call home – despite no longer living there. A few hours north of Toronto, my hometown is often called the “sunshine city.” Tourists flock to the beaches each summer, but by the time September comes, they’re gone, and all that remains is us, the town’s true inhabitants. Nearly thirty minutes after finishing the final episode of Hulu’s “Under the Bridge,” I found out that one of my childhood friends had died. We met when we were twelve, after she …show more content…
When I found out she was dead, I texted my best friend Mackenzie, who I have known since I was three. I don’t remember what I said or how she responded, but each time this has happened, the conversation always ends the same way: Aren’t you glad it wasn’t …show more content…
Each time I pass my hometown’s “welcome!” sign, it feels as if my breath gets stuck in my throat. I don’t feel welcome here, not really. At times I feel like an imposter, like I’m wearing a mask that hides the person I once was when I truly lived here. But mostly, I feel guilty, and I know my surviving friends do too. We’re some of the lucky ones! We went to university and escaped, and were allowed to live a life outside of what we used to call home. While I know that I could not prevent the drugs, accidents or abuses that have destroyed so many of my loved ones, I cannot help but wonder why I’ve been spared the same
Death isn’t always the enemy. Life that is continued has the ability to change things that weren’t possible before. Premature death is a misfortune but it shows us we are not immortal. I grew up in the small town of Monroe, Louisiana and the oldest of six children. We were always together and enjoyed each others company, especially when it came to sports and competition. Our favorite sports to play were basketball and football, our parents even bought us our own basketball goal. When our parents let us have time to play outside, we would play with neighbors and friends until the street lights came on, which was a signal for our curfew. Some of the best memories I have is with my siblings. I can remember when I was fourteen, my mother finally allowed me to babysit on date night. I was so happy about babysitting because I saw it as real authority over my siblings and I could tell them what to do without a fight. I wanted to be in control, but also wanted to be the cool babysitter, so I decided to have a handstand contest. The rules were whoever can hold the longest handstand could have chocolate cookies before bed, my siblings were excited. Each one of us took turns doing a hand stand but falling quicker than we got up. Then it was my brother’s Said turn, he was the most athletic of the boys and the one I always wanted to beat in a race. He held his hand stand for twenty seconds but when he came down he his feet crashed into my mother’s marble and glass coffee table, shattering the glass. He was unharmed but the table was ruined. When my parents came home, they didn’t notice the table was missing until my younger sister blurted out we broke the table, we were grounded for weeks.
I was born and raised in Buffalo, New York and it’s all I’ve ever known. When I was younger my parents took me on little short trips like, Toronto and Columbus, Ohio. I was young, so I didn’t really remember a lot that was going on or different about the two places. When I got older, I decided I wanted a change in my life but did not know what or where. In September of 2003, I was invited to my cousin’s wedding in Charlotte, North Carolina. I decided to go and when I did, I did not want to return back to Buffalo. Of course, I had to come back to Buffalo because I was only visiting. I had made up in my mind right then, Charlotte, North Carolina was the place for my children and me. I decided to move to Charlotte before Christmas of that year. My experiences were years to remember. I stayed in Charlotte for a total of seven years. During the years I had been living in Charlotte, my most memorable experiences were the weather and the commuting.
Death is a concept that people find hard to accept. You keep asking yourself “what if” as if it’s going to make your loved one come back. “What if I had been there? What if someone had talked him out of it? What if…?” You always ask yourself these questions, but never get an answer. I find myself still asking these questions even though I know they will never be answered. Death takes the ones we love the most too soon. Unfortunately, I know this feeling all too well.
Death is an enigmatic phenomenon that mankind dances with. Experienced by everyone at some point or another, death weaves its way through our lives and presents to us the reality of its finality and the truth of the unknown. Consequently, death results in the natural need to mourn the loss of people passed on. For most aging adults, death becomes a more conspicuous matter to address than in earlier years. Some cope better than others with the inevitable nature of death, seeing it as the necessary conclusion to a long life, while others deny its approach and attempt to delay its occurrences as long as possible.
Often times I find myself reminiscing about my child hood. I recall driving throughout the prominent metro Detroit neighborhood in which I grew up, Rosedale Park. See in those days my community was a gem which shone bright toward the edification of the Motor City. On streets like Piedmont, Grandville, Stahelin and Artesian one could drive by almost at any time and see children outside playing, adults on porches and sidewalks fellowshipping, and houses abounding with vibrant lights, laughter, and with life. This was my community; moreover, this was a facet of my adolescence that I ignorantly took for granted. Today desolation has grown sovereign over this beautiful gem. Today the sounds of laughter have all but faded into a resounding restless silence. One could even say that abandoned houses and boarded doors and windows have become indigenous, not only to Rosedale Park, but to every part of the metro Detroit area. However, one thing has remained constant; Rosedale Park, no rather Detroit as a whole is still my community.
Where the cool ocean breeze fills the clean mountain air exists a hidden paradise that I have treasured throughout my life. After an eight hour car ride from my house, I finally reach my getaway: Steuben, Maine. Words cannot describe the meaning, importance, and value I hold for this little town on the coast of Maine. Every summer since birth, my family and I have vacationed in Maine at a house owned by my grandparents and within close proximity to other close relatives. My mother’s father was born and raised in a nearby town, Milbridge, and has since bought and owned a summer house in Steuben. When my mother was a child her summers solely included month long trips to the house in Steuben. Naturally, when she birthed my brother, sister, and I our summers came to include Maine as well.
In our lives, we go through stages of mindset and maturity that naturally coincide with aging. One thing that remains the same, though, through all of these stages, is that eventually, we die; we are completely aware of that as humans. Whether because it’s due to the painful reality that is mortality, our ever-diminishing ability to be wistful and imaginative, or merely the impending coming of the Grim Reaper, our entire lives are, ironic as it is, surrounded by and flooded with death. However, as we grow older, our perception of death changes. It goes from taboo in our young ages to something that begins to surround and eventually consume us as we grow older. Between the poems “For the Anniversary of my Death” by
“Mom, when I grow up, I’m moving to New York City!” I remember telling my mother at the tender age of twelve. That dream of living in the Big Apple stayed on the back of my mind until it finally became a reality. At was twenty years old, I was ready to come into my own, so I made one of the most significant decisions of my life; a decision that is most responsible for the evolvement of a young boy having to quickly become a man. I moved to New York City. Soon, I would learn that along with all the excitement and responsibilities associated with this new chapter of my life also came a ton of fear and many lonely nights. Fending for myself would be the only way to survive. After all, this was an enormous unfamiliar city
Death and the grief that comes with it can be one of the hardest battles a person has to overcome.
Death has always been something to fear. In reality death is inevitable and often times the better choice. Individuals struggle with their impending death instead of seeing the beauty in it. Death is not something that should be feared but embraced like in A.E Housman’s poem “To an Athlete Dying Young”, Robert Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and Edwin Arlington Robinson’s poem “Richard Cory”.
I found out about her death two days after it occurred. I was in church getting ready to play my flute in the choir. My best friend was with me. I guess she knew that I didn’t see the news. I can remember still remember what she said. She told me that she was at a friend’s house on Friday night. They were getting ready for a dance that I did not go to. Her mom told them that something had happened. She conveyed the message to me by saying “Meg…I think that Tiff died.” She couldn’t just tell, because she knew that I would be devastated, but I knew that it was no mistake. I ran to the bathroom and began to grieve for my friend who never even got to receive her driver’s license.
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The fleeting changes that often accompany seasonal transition are especially exasperated in a child’s mind, most notably when the cool crisp winds of fall signal the summer’s end approaching. The lazy routine I had adopted over several months spent frolicking in the cool blue chlorine soaked waters of my family’s bungalow colony pool gave way to changes far beyond the weather and textbooks. As the surrounding foliage changed in anticipation of colder months, so did my family. My mother’s stomach grew larger as she approached the final days of her pregnancy and in the closing hours of my eight’ summer my mother gently awoke me from the uncomfortable sleep of a long car ride to inform of a wonderful surprise. No longer would we be returning to the four-story walk up I inhabited for the majority of my young life. Instead of the pavement surrounding my former building, the final turn of our seemingly endless journey revealed the sprawling grass expanse of a baseball field directly across from an unfamiliar driveway sloping in front of the red brick walls that eventually came to be know as home.
Rashida Rowe wrote, “People die, memories don’t, cherish the people in your life, let them know you love them because sometimes our loved ones are taken away from us so suddenly we never get to tell them how we really felt.” As a victim of losing a loved one I can relate to this quote immensely. Being at such a young age, 13 years old, I not only lost one of my best friends but one of my parents. That happened to be my father. As unexpected as it was, I had no power to change the circumstances at that moment.
She had been sick for a few months in a hospital but one day I got home from school, and everyone was sad. Immediately that was when I knew she died. I didn’t ask for details because I didn’t want to know. I do know