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Thoughts

A guy I went to high school with passed away last Thursday. I didn't know him very well, but I always thought he was a good kid. He was hilarious, made seventh grade science class bearable, and an unbelievable athlete. He had an easy and boyish smile. He served our country in the Marines. And he was taken too soon.

I was, I am, totally shocked by it. When our servicemen and women come home from deployments we think, That's it. They're safe. But it's things like this that remind me how fragile we are, and how fleeting life is. How one minute you can be there, and the next...you're gone. Elsewhere. 

I read his facebook wall, all the comments that people have left and what he last wrote...it's strange, really. Our five-year reunion is approaching and he wrote on the group's wall that he would be unable to make it (due to deployment) but that we should have the party anyway, joking as always. But now those words have new meaning. It's eerie. 

But there's comfort in it too. Seeing how many lives he touched, how many people he made smile and laugh, seeing macho boys and young men in their 20s saying without shame that they'll think of him every day, that they miss him, that they will never forget him, that looking at pictures of him makes them smile, that they love him. 
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