A Million Ways To Say Goodbye
Samm Sack
Co-Editor-In-Chief
A frantic, almost breathless, string of words followed the calm and steady reassurance of the telephone operator.
911, what’s your emergency?
Shortly thereafter, the retold story spilled out across officers’ desks, search parties marched to the beat of the words, journalists scurried like ants to the scene and gusts of wind blew against their ears.
But in the background, a mother’s wail.
The newspapers, in an overlooked side column, claimed that around 3:30 on a Monday afternoon, a young boy stopped his car on the side of a bridge and jumped over the railing.
The second half of that day proceeded just as the rest of the days would from then on out. A mass of people offered information, search parties or sympathies, claiming to family and friends that they would “always be there for them.”
“Always” is a tricky word. Because what they really meant was that they’d search for the boy until the temperature dropped below single-digits or their fingers were numb from the water. They’d tell stories of what he used to be like until they could hardly remember his face, his name or his meaning. They’d offer sympathies for as long as needed, they just expected you to stop asking for it.
Eventually, grief should be an afterthought.
That was Feb. 10, 2010. Four years have passed since the words, stamped on the fourth page of a local newspaper, announced that a teen boy had “fallen to his death”. Those words have rotted away for four long years in which I started and almost finished high school, grew five inches, learned stick shift, had my first kiss and actually figured out how to write a check.
After all of those things, I can still hear the deafening silence after that frightful call; the ache of my knees from falling to the ground, but of being able to stand back up; the world’s attempt to keep spinning around me.
I keep tumbling to the ground, which is a fault of a clumsy head controlling flimsy legs. Yet, for some reason people tried to yank me out of my haze, grasping my arm firmly and screaming at me to get a grip. Stop moping around the house, go run, do something I love.
Anything.
I wanted to move, but I felt like something was weighing me down.
Senior Samantha Larsen described that frozen feeling of shock the day she was sitting in church with her grandpa one moment, but the next was running into the parking lot to watch her mother unsuccessfully try and resuscitate him.
“I had a chance to live inside my head since then, and I have really thought hard about it all for a while,” Larsen stated. “I didn’t think it was fair because I hadn’t recovered from the death of my first grandpa before my second one passed away.”
Death’s systematic sequence doesn’t seem to really be all that fair, but for those of us hanging back, the realization must dawn on us that our own life is still going.
“I get it now. I get that no amount of time would have been enough time. It all hurts just the same if it happens now, five years ago or ten years from now,” Larsen said, “if it happens three in one year or seven years apart. It all hurts just the same.”
An impending doom, an impenetrable cloud of a personal apocalypse, hangs gloomily over our heads with the knowledge that our own time will soon dry out like grapes in the sun. It’s a scary thought for some--others embrace it.
Regardless of the outlook on our own death, when others are robbed from us before we think that they’re done living, when either God or the worms (whichever you believe in) should take them back, we should learn to accept the fact that they are at peace. And although they might be tranquil, that doesn’t necessarily mean that we have to be. Nor does that signify any permission to forget, even if remembering hurts. I refuse to forget or to be told that moving on is better for me.
Sophomore Emma Scheel claims that there isn’t a timer, with grains of sand draining out, that should dictate when it’s time for a person to be patched over.
“It’s not like they’re not in your heart, because they obviously still are. Sometimes I feel like I shouldn’t be allowed to ‘get over it’, but eventually there comes a time when you don’t think about them every day,” Scheel said, “and so when you do think about them, you can reminisce with a sad smile and pray you’re living enough for the both of you. But no, you don’t, you shouldn’t, ever forget.”
When former Waverly Student Taylon Artman passed away suddenly six during a car accident just six months ago, or when former Middle School Emma Kringle passed away last year, they were buried with the hearts of a hundred Waverly students and staff. And although they were recognized for the days that followed, why have they all but been forgotten in the hallways? Why does no one bring up their names or memories? There's no reason that they should be buried away emotionally as well as physically, like Adirea Jayleen claimed when she wrote that "today marks 6 months without you physically, but I know you have been with me in my heart the whole time. I love you Taylon Douglas Artman. Gone but NEVER forgotten."
No one has the right to tell you to "get over it". We are entitled to grieve for as long as we please, be that for years, decades or whole lifetimes. We should never be forced to utter a final goodbye.
