October 24, 2011
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Rory.
In lieu of two great former students losing their lives in a senseless hit and run accident and another being put in the ICU for severe injuries I felt it was necessary for myself and maybe for others to read about experiences.
I’ve noticed that the best way for me to teach or express or cope is through experience. The way I see it is that your emotions are like that chart your teacher has up in third grade with the faces making faces of the different feelings humans have. Happy. Sad. Confused. Constipated. You know the go-to ones. But to talk to someone about how they’re feeling, the best way I’ve found is to show them how normal it is to be feeling that way. While the situation may be greater or the severity of the emotions larger you can still let that person know that it really is okay to be feeling that way.
When I was a Junior in high school I lost one of my best friends: Rory McElwain. He drove his brother’s sports car way too fast on a residential street and wrapped it around a telephone poll. The others in the car survived and he died.
I was told the news the next morning, it was Sunday. It was a Catholic Mass for Confirmation. I didn’t want to be there I was just getting confirmed to please my mother. I was brooding almost sitting there listening to everyone go on and on about how great they are for loving ghosts. Then I was given the news. I felt a centimeter tall. I broke my hand when I punched the wall. How can a friend of mine die? How can anyone close to me die? At this point I had already experienced a loss of a friend: Samantha, 7th grade, to brain cancer. But, you can’t stop brain cancer. You can stop a car. I thought it was so unfair that he decided to feel invincible.
I have never cried so hard in my entire life. It hurt to cry, I would cry seemingly out of nowhere. As I write this now, tears are welling up. I knew that everyone around me had all the similar feelings I had, but I felt alone, like I was the only one who could be effected.
Rory played football and basketball. I played basketball with him. When we had practice that day we just sat in the gym and hugged and talked about it. All these guys, who usually just grunted and made misogynistic comments were expressing deeply about this. I couldn’t. I wear my heart on my sleeve and I couldn’t say one thing.
At the funeral. When they carried his body past me in the church I couldn’t stand I cried so hard. Angel, a 6’2” linebacker much larger than I and much more manly even at 16 caught me and held me. Then just as it was time to leave I had one last heave of a sob to come out and I farted, right on Angel. We both wanted to ignore and we couldn’t and we just started laughing. Couldn’t help it. We must have looked like we went into hysterics. Rory would have enjoyed that moment.
We’ve all experienced loss in someway. We all deal with it differently. We’ve all read something like this post before I know it. I’m not trying to break new ground. I just want people to know that it will always be okay. I can talk about how I’ve felt, clearly. All I’m saying is you’re never alone with something like this. And your own 6’2” linebacker will show up so you can fart on him, to know that its okay to move on.
