Now What?
10.22.2004 @ 3:00 am

It just doesn't seem normal.

The mortality of it all. The number of wakes and funerals I've been to since I was a teenager. I'm not talking about family members or great aunt hilda's daughters neice - I'm talking about people I've laugh and cried with. People that shaped my early years and that I shared moments with and came away better for it.

Greg Carhart - 1990 car accident. Died our senior year. he was 18. A memorial page was put into the yearbook for him last minute with quotes from his friends. Apparently some of the "A" crowd made a big stink and said they weren't gonna buy yearbooks if his picture was gonna be in it. Bastards. Just cuz he wasn't 'their' type of guy. I have to admit (probably for the first time out loud) there's some guilt over his death I still carry - there's some part of me that wonders how much I had to do with it or if it was just bitterness on his girlfriends part. I dont' know if that'll ever get resolved. I don't remember all the details, but I was best friends with his girlfriends sister. Anyway, his girlfriend did something (I forget what) and Greg and I had homeroom together so we talked a lot. I went to the bowling ally one night where he worked and we talked. I told him what his girlfriend did - I guess it was cheat on him, I honestly can't remember. Anyways, shortly after that, Greg left. No one heard from him for a month or so. Then it started circulating around school he was in an accident. Then finally through the grapevine it was confirmed that he was killed in a car accident on his way back home. He was somewhere in North or South Carolina - I don't remember which - and he took a hairpin curve too fast. He was a John Doe for about 2 weeks, his body was so badly bruised and broken up. A lot of shit went down at the wake. His girlfriend and her sister (my now ex-best friend) made a stink and said I didn't belong there, that I was the reason he left, I was the reason he was. . .well, you get the point. Whatever. I paid my respects to his mom and sister - they both said he'd mentioned me and knew who I was. I thought that was really cool. The next day for the funeral, a lot of people didn't have rides for it so since I had my moms station wagon, we all piled in. There must have been 10 of us in there from the funeral home, to the church, to the cemetary then to the reception. If my parents found out they would have choked me because I had JUST gotten my license. I guess it was my way of saying goodbye to Greg - making sure none of his friends were left out. I was 17. My biggest comfort was Chris Zehl (My first boyfriend back from when I was 14). He stood by me the whole time, telling me that I did belong there and that Greg would have wanted me there. Funny thing that is, isn't it? Telling someone that the person that's dead would have wanted you at their funeral. Go figure.

Danny Kuntz - 1991 athsma attack. ONE WEEK after we graduated high school. I met Danny when he transferred into my grammar school in 6th grade. He had a big nose, bigger ears, a big grin and an even bigger heart. He was an artist and sketched and doodled constantly on his notebooks and papers. I started writing poetry when I was in 6th grade. Danny was one of the only ones that didn't make fun of me for it. He was my second crush. So from that point on, I wrote poems and would give them to him and he'd draw a little character or sketch out a silly doodle having to do with the poem. When high school came around we sort of went our separate ways. I was in the 'track team' crowd and one of Mo's girls (the coach's name was Mr. Mahalick and thats what the entire school referred to us as) and he was on the soccer team, Dungeons and Dragons club and I think he was in the German club too. I still have that stupid marble notebook with all of his drawings in it.

Mike McMahon - 1992 car accident in Pennsylvania one year after we graduated high school. His girlfriend Bridgette was with him in the car and she survived. He was 19. We went to school together starting at age 4 in kindergarten. I had the biggest crush ever on Mike all through grammar school (that is till Danny came along and Mike transferred to another school). I was a big tomboy and played with the boys at recess a lot and Mike was one of those boys. We'd play freeze tag. Every. Damn. Day. Me and 5 or 6 boys. The best memory ever I have of Mike is when we got caught playing in the snow in first grade. Of course it was me, Mike, PJ, and John. I was always just one of the boys. We really didn't hang out during high school what with the whole 'cliques' thing. He had his group, I had mine. But if you ever ask me who my first crush was, it was Mike McMahon and every time I put my bare hands into a pile of snow I flash back to being 5 years old outside the principals office hiding behind Mike and the statue of Mary hoping that the principal called my mom and not my dad.

Chris Racon - 1995 cause of death unknown. Found in an Albuquerque, New Mexico hotel room by a maid. We went to CYO together and he was a year younger than me. He played guitar and taught me how to play the opening chords to Every Rose Has It's Thorn - though I've since forgotten it. Chris and I used to have these huge in depth talks about EVERYTHING. We attended CYO together and went on retreats and daytrips together with the rest of the crew from St. Johns CYO. He didn't want to get caught smoking by the adults, so we used to huddle over in the corner under the light by the door to the youth room and I'd take a puff of my cigarette and blow the smoke into his mouth so Mrs. K wouldn't see him smoking and have to tell his parents. Yes, we were strange and bored teenagers. We held hands a lot, hugged and laid all over each other during meetings. Snuggled outside the youth room in the winters to keep warm. We even kissed a few times here and there. He was the best non-boyfriend I ever had. I have 2 pictures of him. One is the group of us that went on a retreat one year. . .I guess it was '92 or '93 and the other one was taken by the waterfall in Winfield Park. It was 'our' spot. We could sit there forever and just listen to the water running down and not say one word - we didn't need to. Chris and I just understood each other. He got me, he was one of the few who ever did. I can't smell a big pile of freshly raked leaves without thinking of him and that retreat when we all played two hand touch football and when we got back from the retreat we packed my car with our stuff and went out to the waterfall. Thats when the picture was taken.

Mark McCorkle - 1997 car accident. Driving home from work late at night. I met Mark through his girlfriend Sue. Theirs was the big love affair of CYO. Every CYO had that one couple everyone admired for being together for so long. St. Johns had Alissa and Brian, St. Elizabeths had Keith and Karen, and St. Marys had Sue and Mark. I met Sue because she was a candidate for a retreat me and some other seniors were running for the county. She was one of my kids at the table I ran the discussion for. Her and Catie were always attached at the hip, so I got to know them both. I wound up going to their CYO for meetings after the retreat and soon there after we were suddenly at each others houses, staying over, at each others birthday or holiday parties - They called me Kim Coebean. After a year or so I stopped going to St. Marys for too many reasons to get into right now. I met up with Mark at a friends party and he and Sue had broken up. So through happenstance, we started dating. About 2 months into us dating, he brought me back to CYO with him. We were kissing in the basement and down the steps comes Sue - whom he didn't expect to be there - and we got caught. He never broke up with her. So ended my friendship with Sue, Catie and the rest of the CYO - 'cause yeah, I was the bad guy that broke up the relationship of the most popular couple at CYO, and also ended my relationship with Mark. I never talked to Sue or Catie again, though I did run into them at the movie theatre in Menlo Park Mall a few years later. We kind of looked at each other for 2 minutes - then looked away. And the next time I saw Mark, he was in a casket.

Tommy Vitale. Tommy died in a motorcycle accident. I knew him since he was 6. His sister Tammy was a year older than me and went to my school. In truth, she did pick on me a bit but in high school, things changed and we became very close friends. We hung out a lot at her place or mine, at the lunch table, after school. And her two brothers were always around - Tommy and Timmy. Thy lost their mom when Tammy was in 7th or 8th grade and none of them were ever the same. We all rode the bus together in grammar school and since my brother was in the same grade as Timmy, Tammy and I wound up looking after each others brothers. Tommy was 29 when he died April 17, 2004.

Vinny Vito. I met Vinny in 8th grade when I left St. Elizabeths and went to the public middle school in October of my 8th grade year (long story). He was your typical jerky italian boy - it was 1986 so of course he wore those crazy colored muscle pants and tank tops, dreamt of owning an IROC when he got his license and listened to 'guido' music as we called it back in the day. He was the 'in' crowd but it never stopped him from talking to me. Didn't stop him in high school either and was friendly with my mom since she worked in the cafeteria at the high school :(ALL of my friends were friendly with my mom in high school - they wanted free lunch!!!). He was a great guy, always laughing and smiling. He got into a motorcycle accident about 4 years ago and was paralized from the waist down. He died from some sort of infection because of the paralization. He was 31 when he died on March 18, 2004.

Which now of course, brings us to Bruce. I'm not gonna bother with the details, you know them already.

I just realized something. Out of everyone I just wrote about, there are no girls. Wow, did I just have an ephiphany or what? Care to ask me again why I'm a flaming homosexual? Anyone?

My mom said to me tonight, "Did you ever think that some people are meant to die? I mean honestly. Can you imagine what Marilyn Monroe would look like now? Or Elvis Presely? Or can you tell me that you can really picture daddy in golf pants and a sweater playing golf because he's retired? Some people just don't belong here after they hit a certain age. Thats just the way it is." Yeah, I guess she's right. I mean, I did say as much about Bruce in my last entry.

But even so, damn it if it doesn't just suck. If it wasn't just so goddamn hard to understand - never mind say goodbye. I just don't get sometimes what it's all for. Know what I thought about when Bruce died? Gee, I wonder what they're gonna do with all his Manson CD's? Nevermind that, all his stuff. I mean, where does it all go? Any of it? You now have in your posession, one persons lifetime worth of stuff and what the hell are you supposed to do with it all? What if they had a party to go to in 3 days, or dry cleaning to pick up or a bill to pay? Who does that? What if they planned on having this big life changing conversation with you or anyone next week - how's that supposed to work? How is that fair that they didn't get to finish something they were in the middle of? Gah, I don't know.

Wake's do whacky things to me. Especially one's for 22 year old boys.

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. . .where i've been // where i'm going. . .

Last Five:
08.02.2005 - Untitled
07.20.2005 - Obligitory link
07.03.2005 - till then
06.16.2005 - Multi-bulleted Update
06.16.2005 - Coldplay, 'Green Eyes'