My Great Aunt Naoma was an amazing woman, and had spent much of her life as a surrogate mother to my Grandmother, and a surrogate Grandmother to my mother. She was resilient to the end, and died peacefully in her sleep.
Luckily I got to visit her just two weeks before. We joked and she laughed. She was spoiled and enjoying her visiting family. She died a full and happy woman.
But she leaves us empty. Death is an existential inevitability. Something that we all must face through many scenarios in our lives. This is the first though, that I have experienced of a beloved family member.
I'm really good at rationalization, and as I'm completely unable to attend the funeral due to a huge mess at school, I'll manage to get through this with a modicum of sanity. However, I know its being suppressed. I'm just unwilling to bring it out and deal with it. All would be well in my glass world, if it wern't for some other news I recieved today.
Jarrod IMed me as I was leaving LaRae's apartment and told me to check out a website that is frequented by a community of our friends. Usually when I look at this site, I'm seeing accomplishments in video games, and that's what I expected to see tonight. However, instead, I recieve this message: "Some very sad news reached us today when we found out one of our longtime friends, Jabalia (Julie), died in a car accident."
I had known Jab for a little over four years. I had looked to her for advice on every major developmental struggle in my life. We spent time talking about LaRae, about colleges, about graduate opportunities, about mutual friends, about her loves and jobs, about what's "important in life." And hers was snuffed. At 29 years old this vibrant personality blinked out of the lives of the people who cared for her and were cared for by her.
I feel a bit bad because Jab's death hit me instantly more than did Naoma's. I suppose maybe I've been preparing for Naoma's death for some time, and Jab's was so unexpected. Or maybe it was the combination of things from this week. Either way, I sit here at 2:30 trying to write a paper on video game addiction...and it just doesn't matter.
But we have to keep on pretending that it does. Ignoring our mortality is the only way that our society is able to progress, and just because life has recieved sudden clarity for me, doesn't mean my proffessors and graduate admissions officers will experience the same clarity about my life.
So I type on in the face of grief over my friends. Hug someone you love today, tell them it's from me.