Life will offer you valuable opportunities to retrospectively reflect upon past “periods” that have occured therein. Where I’ve had the opportunity to do so, reality for me is that someone else painfully & abruptly removes themselves from the cast in the timeframe of my adult life somehow. Knowing them as you grow can make the subtraction of their element in your own life that much more sudden, no matter how long it’d been since you last saw or spoke with them.
I suppose what’s authored here is a collection of brief explanations, each somewhat detailing “who” I’ve seen lost & what their sudden absence taught me. Over time, the losses of them individually taught me things both specifically and collectively. These types of lessons, as early as they started in life, were all the prelude I’d ever need to the life I’d live over the next three decades.
Dusty Stack, Photographs… Times I’ve Cried, Mostly Laughed
That child & I used to play together as growing infants. Alongside each other, I started school before she moved away. Losing her as suddenly (and early in life) as I did showed me, in the cruelest way possible, that the “Grim Reaper” awaits nothing. No plan, no man, silences the call’s toll. When the bell rings your own final rhythmic note, it’s your time…… like it or not.
Just a couple of years later, a neighbor’s oldest son (in his 20’s) was shot & killed. It was blamed on a rival gang from the same area code as ours. I remember playing with the youngest children of their family, one of whom was disabled. Since I was actually old enough to attend such an event as a funeral (in my mf’ing parents’ minds), and since “I’m the oldest” of their children, I got the “joy” of attending the ceremony alongside them singularly. My sister got to stay with Grandma that morning.
Soon after this, Mom’s cousin “passed” via car crash. They’d been closer when mom was younger, and in the days leading up to mom’s marriage with my father. Once mom took up that attempt at her own family, she didn’t see him (or really, any of her family) as much… but I saw the impact that his passing had on her emotionally. Despite being so out of touch socially over a course of time, such a sudden event in Mom’s life truly affected her in ways I hadn’t seen… through this unfortunate event, I saw my first harsh example of that. Sister’s spoiled ass got to attend her first funeral. I was ten, She was eight.
Life’s a Game I Cannot Win… Good & Bad Must Surely End
Soon afterwards, while in Junior High, a girl I’d attended elementary school with committed suicide. This girl poisoned herself by drinking half a gallon of bleach to achieve this. By the time she was found in her own home, she’d passed hours prior… the morning after she’d “done the deed” in the middle of the night before. Her & I had known each other since elementary school… as a result of “incidents” in her own life, years prior.
Though we’d been friends since elementary school, she gave me my first real lesson on what it was to suddenly lose a friend so close in age to my own. I had no idea how relevant that lesson would then become as years, years & years passed.
Within a thousand days of that, my father found himself in legal trouble. After forty-five days of his “systemic absence,” he returned, only to end up drugged & dead a day later…… with no one home but me & our “somehow let this poor fuck stay” roommate. He found dad’s corpse before I’d awakened, with dad sat upright on our living room couch… where he’d died hours before. I’ll never forget the awkward angle of his rigor-mortised body as they rolled him out of our home, covered with a sheet. It was the last time I ever saw my real father actually leave his home. I never thought it’d be in corpse form.
At one point, a long-time family friend had a heart for me. I ended up staying with him for about four months. A family friend when I was younger, he’d volunteered to care for me following Dad’s passing. Needless to say, after less than four months, I
If not for them, I would’ve ended up on the streets with no friends locally.
At Times, Truly Terrified… Dope and Booze Don’t Help To Hide
One after another, people began dropping dead like flies drawn to a trap…… with that same design of trap becoming somehow differently diminishing for each of them. Pleasure perpetuated habit, habit often lead to overindulgence, and often, such behavior would lead to loss of life.
David Hojak’s parents, his relatives, his siblings, his friends… none were immune. Each fell subject. After decades of surveying so many become their own undoing by attempting to mask their ineptitudes, I’ve come to prefer relieving isolation over insincere socialization, and relaxation of mind over the stress of surveying another’s overreactions. In finality, each of us only has so long individually. We can/will each achieve the most possible, through relationships with others.
Never underestimate what someone you know might be able to do for you one day, and appreciate them for as long as they’re there to appreciate. Be grateful for them. No one has to help you… but the ones who are still alive and choosing to can change your life.
“You love someone, there will be grief…… The kiss of death, lips of a thief.”
~Peter Steele
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