The Meaning of Life

As most of you know, I lost my Mom when I was three years old.  What you may not know is that by the time I turned 19, I had been to more funerals than I can count on two hands.  Family members, close friends, influential teachers, and an ex-boyfriend.  Of these funerals, I had delivered two eulogies.  I’ve been to more funerals since then, and as a consequence, I think I became ”desensitized” to death.  Don’t get me wrong, I definitely grieved when my loved ones passed on, but think that having been exposed to so much death growing up made me somewhat “comfortable” with the concept of it.  In my mind, death was a part of life, and we were all going to expereince it at some point.  No big deal.

For example, a handful of years ago my friend David was preparing for a funeral of one of his family members.   David wasn’t particularly close to this family member, but he was visibly distraught, so I asked him what was wrong.  David explained that he was worried about attending a funeral for the first time in his life.  I thought that was so weird, that David had not been to a funeral before.  That perspective was very enlightening — not everyone had been exposed to death as much as I had been.

I bring up this morbid topic because of some awful news I received today about a good friend of mine, Eric.  A mutual friend of ours called me today to let me know that Eric committed suicide this past weekend.

Eric was a sharp, talented, witty, and compassionate soul.  He was an amazing writer, a brilliant filmmaker, and a stellar friend.  I knew that Eric struggled with depression issues, and I often served as a sounding board for him when he was having a bad day.  And although Eric clearly had issues (who doesn’t right?), I always viewed him as a good kid with a good head on his shoulders.

When I received the news of Eric’s passing, I was overwhelmed by sadness.  I started sobbing uncontrollably, making our mutual friend on the phone start to cry also.  It pains me to think about how alone he must of felt to do what he did, and I feel extremely guilty that I failed to call him to check in, instead letting the minutia of my life take over and justify waiting another weekend before calling.

I’ve been sitting with this news for the last few hours now, trying to go over in my mind why I’m so upset.  I mean, of course I’m upset because a good friend of mine is now gone, but there is something different about how I’m processing Eric’s death.  I realize now that Eric’s death is the first for me since my battle with Karla.  I can’t help but think that my perspective on death — and more accurately my perspective on life — is significantly different now having battled cancer for the last year-and-a-half. 

One of my favorite stories my Dad tells is of the day he graduated from high school.  As he stood on the steps of Lanai High, he screamed to the heavens, “I’m going to live forever!  I’m never going to die!”  Like my Dad, in my late teens and all throughout my twenties, I lived a pretty carefree life, thinking I would live forever and the world was mine to conquer whenever I decided to pull the trigger.  My diagnosis changed everything.  At that point, I could no longer deny that I had been existing instead of living, relying on the fallacy of my immortality to justify my passiveness in my world.  No, after Karla’s introduction, death was staring straight at me and I needed to respond. 

My life is something I have been forced to fight for, so as I sit here and grieve Eric’s death, I am unnerved by it and will continue to be bothered by it for some time.  I realize that his depression was likely too much to bear and I can’t judge him for the choice he made.  I have not walked a mile in his shoes.  However, I’m starting to feel a bit of anger bubble up in my core.  How dare he turn in the towel when some of us continue to fight to stay in the race?  I’m experiencing a lot of cognitive dissonance, to say the least.

Please bear with me as I must postpone the release of today’s soundtrack.  What’s funny is that I got the soundtrack idea from Eric, who created a soundtrack of our friends’ “entrance songs.”  He asked everyone if they could choose one song that would announce their entrance into any room (e.g. board meeting, coffee shop, bedroom), what it would be.  I have not been able to find my copy of the CD that Eric burned of everyone’s songs, and I fully intend to find it so that I can include Eric’s entrance song as today’s soundtrack.  More soon. . . .

Update on Eric’s song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_K6Y-YGZUec&feature=PlayList&p=F662A80AEC11377B&index=0&playnext=1.  Eric had a lot of familial issues that exacerbated his depression, and being reminded that this was his song highlights the tragedy of his death.