Tonight a boy from my high school died

http://www.sacbee.com/101/story/1329846.html

I feel so sorry for him and his parents. I didn't know him too well, so I'm not going to lie and say we were great friends, but it's sad, too, because just last June one of my friends (a Senior who had graduated literally three days before) overdosed and died as well. It's astounding that we would have two deaths in a high school in less than a year, even moreso less than 6 months.

But I think the real lesson here is that we all need to live our life to its fullest; like we're going to die the next day, or even in a minute. We need to pretend like everything could be gone in an instant, and for that reason we must make amends. It's sad, but it's eye-opening - we need to pretend like every day is our last.

I am so sorry to hear about this...

But you are entirely correct...

We should live as though we could die tomorrow. Most of us just get lost in the day-to-day trivia of our lives, and forget to really live...

My deepest condolences to your friend's family and friends...

Safe passage to him.

:hug:

I do hope his family can make it through this tragedy. No parent should have to bury their child...no parent...

This makes me tear up now thinking of the 4000+ families who HAVE had to bury their children because of this mess in Iraq...it's just heartbreaking.

it is such a horrible and painful place to be. all you can do right now is be together and comfort and love one another.

and yes, live to the fullest and every time you say goodbye to some you love, tell them how you feel.

there were 4 who died. I was very close to 3 of those 4.
One, I had hung out with while we talked about art and books we enjoyed. We were both avid readers.

One was a guy I had known since middle school. We were very close as well. We used to trade stuff with each other and together at the local pawn shops and junk shops. That is how I got my Star Wars watch, my Snoopy watch, and the stand-up notebook that I still have to this day. It looks like a regular 1" thick 3 ring binder, but the bottom half flips out and you can stand it up like a table top music stand. It is one of my most favorite treasures and means more and more to me as time goes by. I sure wish we had Stevie back though. That would be better.

And one of the ones who died was a close friend named Stanley. He was one of the most talented singers/performers in our junior high school arts festival. He was the best dancer around too. His girlfriend had recently broken up with him and he took it very very hard. He had delved into the stoner crowd heavily after that. Before, he was always friends with every group of people, including the stoner crowd. I had always been close to him, but we got closer when he joined the stoner crowd.

One night, after he had gotten in trouble for underage drinking and smoking pot, the cops were looking for him. I knew where he was, but I wouldn't have told them for love nor money. I knew Stanley was a good guy and I wasn't about to turn him in. Fuck them for persecuting him and torturing him when he was already in so much pain. They practically tortured him. They weren't trying to help him. They were trying to arrest him. That wouldn't have helped anything.

He came by the school radio station after school was closed except for the radio station, on the afternoon after the police told the principle to alert students to turn him in. He came by the station while I was on shift. We talked and I played a few requests for him. He was unusually distant that night, but I wasn't exactly aware enough to know what he was really thinking. God, we were just kids. I wish I had known or seen the warning signs. :cry:

I'll never forget it. He had a bottle of Jack Daniels in his coat and we had a couple drinks before he left the station. He told me I always had the best taste in music and he just wanted to stop by and listen to some music before heading back out here to our neighborhood to go home.

After that night, he went missing for a week. Even I didn't know where he was during that week.


It turned out that I was the last person to talk to him or see him alive. He died less than 100 yards from where I live now, in our neighborhood. Back then, I lived further up the street. Now, I live really close to where Stanley died just up the hill from the bridge. He jumped off the bridge and got killed when he landed in a tree. They say he would have died even if he hadn't jumped though. He had enough drugs, alcohol, and pills in him to kill him three times over and it was below freezing and he only had his lightweight thin leather jacket on. He was dressed exactly the same way as when he left the station from what they said. They didn't find his body for about a week. That started one of my worst depressions ever and I became the biggest stoner in school after that.

I was hurting so much knowing I was the last one to talk to or see Stanley alive. There were no real school counselors at that time and the teachers didn't offer us any kind of support dealing with Stanley's death. The time they put his death at was about 3 hours after we said our goodbyes in the radio station that night. Stanley's hug for me when he left the station and his insistence that I lock the doors to the radio station and keep safe, stayed with me. It had already begun to get dark around 5 or 6 at night. He was like a big brother to me for years. What could I have done to stop him? Why didn't I know what he was going home to do that afternoon?

I remember his horrid wretched cousin, who later became a local police officer, saying he went to hell for killing himself. That tore my heart out even more. That afternoon, I went home and cut myself pretty badly by smashing a glass as hard as I could on some of the rocks underneath the bridge. His cousin made me so fucking mad that day. I wanted to kill him.

I hated his cousin from that day forward for saying that about Stanley. I still wouldn't piss on that asshole if he was on fire. How could he say such a thing...especially on the day the news hit that they had found Stanley's body?

I was never really "right" again after that. It was like salt in the wounds. I still remember which class we were in and that it was close to the end of class when his cousin said that. I still remember the feeling like ice was running through my veins when he said it. I remember staring at him and everyone gathering around as fast as they could to stop me in case I jumped him. They were all telling me to ignore his ignorance and hate and to walk away. I wanted to kill him. I wanted it so bad, like nothing I had ever felt before. That was probably my first true homicidal impulse ever in my life. It took everything I had in me to walk away and not get in trouble for fighting. It literally felt like I had ice in my veins. I'll never forget that feeling.

They say that's when the light left my eyes. They say I developed a thousand yard stare after that. It killed me quite a bit inside. I still miss Stanley and Stevie, and Timmy, but Stanley's death has haunted me forever now. He could sing like Prince and dance like Michael Jackson. At the time, that was a big huge deal to all of us. Stanley was one talented performer. If he was still alive, I know I would want him to be the lead singer of whatever band I was in. He was that good of a performer and that good of a friend and that good of a person. I miss him.

RIP Stevie
RIP Timmy
&
RIP Stanley :hug:

Our senior class lost three students to a drunk driving accident, but I didn't know any of them and didn't understand the tragedy. As a parent, now, I do, and it hits me every time I read about one of our soldiers being killed or going missing or committing suicide. I might feel differently if the Iraq war was morally justified but it isn't, and I believe we are all hurting on some level as a consequence. :hug: So sorry for your losses, Jamastiene.

And I'm so sorry for your losses. It's so tragic to hear these, it's saddening to think that people can die so easily.

Back before Airbags and when seatbelts were rarely used if even installed. Most classes at my high school lost between 1/2 and 1% of their classmates during the highschool years.

Each loss is deeply tragic and it won't help your personal situation. But it seems we are doing much better at keeping young people alive than in decades past.

He was quiet, nice, though I admit I did not know him well. He lay his head on the Railroad tracks not far from school. I still shudder to think about his pain after all this time. How lost must you be to put yourself in front of a moving train and not care?

Wherever he's gone, I hope he found peace.

terrible.

you that we will all not live forever so take care of you and stop any risky behaviour.

Usually the crazy ones go around then.

He had called 911 from his house after a practice, they came and left. Several hours later his parents found him dead at home.

When my oldest son was a senior in 2003, one of his close friends committed suicide right before
Christmas.

Condolences to the family and to his friends.

It's an eye-opener how quickly life can be gone.

:hug: