There was this boy; this
tall, lanky boy with dark hair. I used to play with him by the swings. He
always smiled and I liked him. Not in that school-girl crush kind of way, but
in the way that always made me smile and feel warm.
As we grew up we didn’t talk as much. We would smile in the
hall at school and talk during class here and there. We just never saw each
other outside of school really.
I remember when we dissected frogs in Biology. He sat behind
me and knew I was completely freaked out. He sliced poor little Kermit’s mouth
all the way back as instructed and stuck a dissection pin in his bottom lip. In
his best croaky voice he said, “Amiee, kiss me, I’m a prince!” That memory
still makes me smile.
After graduation I’d see him at the pizza place on the
corner cooking and we’d say hi, but it wasn’t until later that I understood how
he saw me. He said he admired mine and my sisters’ bravery. Our mother had
passed from cancer the previous fall. He didn’t know that we were all in pieces
on the inside and barely holding it together on the outside. He wrote to us in
January but it was October before he shared his words. Maybe if he knew, if I’d
told him I was falling apart too…
When I was a little girl my Grampy, my dad’s dad, wasn’t
around a lot, or at least as much as my mom’s dad. My mom would take us to the
grocery store where he was the butcher. He’d show us the lobsters in the tank
and we’d squeal watching them climb each other. His wife, my dad’s step-mom,
was kind of scary in my young eyes but she had a lot of dolls so that made her
ok in my book. I was young, I didn’t understand…
Before I even met him I’d nicknamed him Omega because of his
relationship with my college buddies. He
was great. He smiled a lot. I laughed a lot with him. We were more friends by
association than anything. Anyone could see how in love my friend, Spoons, was
with him. He loved her too. He was struggling though. He was drowning, reaching
for help that just couldn’t find him. One day he just couldn’t reach anymore….
The tall, lanky boy with the frog, Grampy, Omega…. They all
have one thing in common; they’re dead by their own hands. Their futures are
now just a bunch of ‘what ifs’ and ‘if onlys.’
Suicide Prevention Week ended on Saturday. It came and went
without my acknowledgement; something I won’t accept. This week I will be
writing love on my arms for these people, these amazing people, who left us all
too soon. I ask that everyone take a moment to remember the lives lost to suicide, to tell the people
you love that you love them and are there if they need you.
You are missed and will not be forgotten.
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