Young Writers Society

A wooden box, that’s what they put you in after they painted you till you looked like a toy doll with eyelashes aggrandized and skin, painted to a tan nuance you never had when you were alive.

Life’s memories are fleeting, and with each passing moment, I forget more and more of the little moments we had here and there. The talk about how you ended, rumors about suicide and maladies slowly but readily engulf who you were as a person. I try not to listen to them though, to just remember my fond memories of your radiating smile, but it’s hard to fight my desperation for the truth. I need to know what happened to you, if there was something I could’ve done to save you, to change the course of the present.

People say you’re in a better place now, that you’re in a place where life’s burdens can’t harm you, but as far as I’m concerned, none of these people have met death and survived to tell the story. They say you’ve gone up to this place called heaven, this place void of the cruelties of earth where everything is white and beautiful. I don’t know if I can believe them, because what if there is no such thing as heaven, only hell 1 and hell 2, one with below zero temperatures and another with 100 Celsius plus temperatures? What if earth is heaven?

Sometimes I wonder what you’re thinking now, if you have gone up to the heaven people are saying you have. Perhaps you’re smiling at the stupidity of our human lives, how we believed that wearing a black dress or tuxedo would make everything all better at your funeral. Or perhaps you’re laughing as we worry over petty things like who likes who and what not. Or perhaps you’re letting trails of tears fall unto earth’s broken face as you watch life pass by without your participation, because there was so much that you left behind when you took your final breath.

As the years go by, you’ll see us grow up, mold into mature adults. You’ll see us stress over taking the SATs, laughing giddily as we walk hand in hand with our prom dates, and eventually graduate and get married. We’ll have kids and watch them grow up and harsh lines will form on our faces as we experience growing old. You won’t ever have those experiences. Thinking about this makes me want to hang onto each of these precious moments in life with an increased vigor, but I won’t, because as time passes I’ll forget about you and so will everyone else until you’re nothing but a faded memory that will be brought up here and there at class reunions and other funerals.

I think the worst part is the “could have’s”. You were so bright, both intellectually and spiritually and even athletically. You could havewould have become someone great, a household name even. Or if anything else, a great dad for some child out there that will never be born. You had so much potential, and it just all fell apart when your heart stopped.

I just kept asking myself, when you died, why did it have to be this year? I was mad and bitter. I even went as far as to damn your name. Because when you died, it really did feel like the world was going to end this year, things just started to crumble before my eyes and I began seeing things in a new light. Birthdays could no longer be celebrated, because suddenly, telling someone they were a year closer to their death wasn’t funny anymore. Death isn’t funny anymore, because you made it real. I wish you hadn’t.