lack of understanding

2010
I’m not a fan of you so far. This is how I remember the picture of events, going to work and a facebook glimpse on the newsfeed. KVC, a car crash. I’m driving home on 202, from King of Prussia Mall; I relieve these moments daily. I see the Amber Alert sign letting me know I would be trapped in traffic for hours if I stayed on the current path. Immediately I exit and Philadelphia non local, but “local” news is alerting everyone about this horrific accident. Six pm, eleven pm---saying that at five am they’d let everyone know if these four lanes of traffic would reopen. In my twenty two years of Pennsylvania living-this was an impossible event. I go on facebook the next day after work and see multiple friends joining a group; that group was prayers for you-for you. Kelly was the driver of this car crash that was so beyond my understanding, the car crash that I bitched about because I wanted to get home and not get stuck in late night traffic. The car crash that allowed two major roads be closed for ten hours. This is how I begin to see it, I picture the metal twisting into pretzels while your mind left your body. And there you have it, a D.O.A, several machines providing us with false hope as unexplainable figments cause your body to twitch, to cough, to make everyone think you’d come back kicking. Eight days, I began praying to a God that I don’t believe in, to a hope that doesn’t exist and to a miracle that was so unrealistic it’s almost borderline humoress that I thought of it in the first place. Then the light switch was turned off and your body shut down. God damn Kelly, it kills me to this day to know you left all of us; of course you were fighting I know you wouldn’t have it another way. I just think about how last week I’m literally blowing out candles on my twenty third birthday cake and you are frozen in time at age twenty one.

Death really fucks me up. Not that death is soothing to most, but for the majority of my life I’ve lived in ignorance and blessings- not loosing anyone remotely close to me. Not understanding that once they escaped this mindset that they would never be seen again. The permanent vacation that is so far beyond me, that I cant even come up with an explanation. Death to me is math; I basically flunked out. You are gone, you are not coming back, I will never see you again.

I think religion soothes some people into a false reality about death; like it’s not really over yet. For a while I spent my times believing in a heaven filled with lollypops and pole dancers and endless Hurricane forties, but my God wouldn’t take so many people away. My God, wouldn’t want to inflict harm upon so many. The “everything happens for a reason” bullshit really gets pressing after a while and becomes just about as meaningful as a fucking inspirational bookmark.

Please don’t get me wrong, I don’t sit in my bedroom crying to Hawthorne Heights in my Hot Topic t-shirt and slice my wrists on the regular. This is why it boggles me, it doesn’t hurt me—I just can’t understand it. I don’t understand how death fits into the equation of religion, I don’t grasp on to how life cycles. I think also the big factor of it all is how many times I’ve tried to escape. I want you to know without lighter words, I feel even guiltier when someone so full of life gets the boot.

It continues like this, I’m standing in all black, which is semi-normal for me because of my work attire. Big Jackie O glasses hide the fact that I cannot say goodbye to someone younger than me, someone who had life aspirations and someone who was so in love with her boyfriend, friends, family and essentially life as a whole. It was picturesque in the sense that one cannot describe sadness as an emotion; it has so much more feeling than that. It was so ugly we could say the emotion displayed was beautiful. I wasn’t trying to martyr but it just was too much for me, too much that you were so young. I’m walking out fine you know and it’s so much of my life that had escaped me or maybe it’s the fact that I’m surrounded by religion; that scares me-but I’m literally feeling so much pain in the circumstance that I cannot breathe. I cannot move, I cannot speak. I cannot even begin to utter goodbye. Today is three months after the accident- rewinding, although a ridiculous hypothesis—I would have driven you wherever. My relationship with alcohol… I need it to talk about you, but it took you away. Irony is bliss in all regards.

It comes down to this, your death was such an unnecessary page/chapter. You should be enjoying midterms, you should have went out with me for my birthday-it would have been the first time we were both legal. I should have kept up with you better. I should not try to end something I am blessed to have.