Death for Granted

***Disclaimer: This is the first time I am posting a very personal blog, so please be kind with comments***

      Being in New Orleans doing field work is hard, but nothing out of the usual beginning jitters and insecurities of starting out fieldwork in a new place. What is making it unbearable is mourning the death of a friend will being overly emotional (thanks to PMS and homesickness).  When I was eleven I moved to a predominantly white town and that was very difficult for me. I had no friends, I was one of the only Black females in town, and I didn’t know the culture of the area. I went out looking for friends and I found enemies. 

     About a year after I moved to the area I met a girl.  She lived down the way from me and what started as a friendship of convenience turned into, now looking back, a true friendship. She was younger than me and had the cutest little brother.  Although there  was an age difference we clicked. She looked up to me and I constantly learned from her.  Never think you can’t learn something from everyone you meet because if you deny that you won’t get the most out of relationships.  We became the three musketeers with another girl from the community.

     I started upper grade and she was still in middle school.  When she started upper grade I was in eighth grade and as we got older the distance grew.  Then she moved to California when her mother got remarried. I later found out the marriage did not work and she moved back to the town. By that time we grew apart so I am not sure when she moved back. I believe I may have already started college. However, these are all excuses. In this technological age there is no reason for us not to have kept contact but we did lose contact. It was about six years since I thought about her and I regret that. 

     Yesterday my sister calls me and tells me that my friend died.  My immediate response was, “wow I haven’t thought about her in forever, that’s really sad for her family.” My second thought was, “what did she die from?” After all she was younger than me.  I am still not 100% sure what the cause of death was, the obituary didn’t reveal that information. The more I thought about the situation the more I began to really regret losing contact. She was a genuinely nice and authentic person.  I found her facebook page today and that was an even harder stab in the heart because there was no reason for me not to reach out to her after all these years.  The more I saw pictures, the more memories came swarming back. For the past few hours I have been on the verge of tears and that makes me feel guilty because I don’t think I deserve to mourn her death. It is my fault we lost contact. I don’t want to be one of those people who immediately own the mourning process. I have seen so many times, people who barely know the deceased perform the mourning ritual because that is what is expected of them. Whenever someone dies a million “friends” come out of the woodwork.  Death is popular, that is not to say the dead shouldn’t be mourned but it should be genuine.

     I knew her very well but it was so long ago. Who’s to say she is even the same person. I feel like a fraud for being sad which is ridiculous because this isn’t about me. I am so sorry we grew distant and I am sorry it took her death for me to think about these things.  Death is hard but life can be harder.  I always learned things from my friend and even in death she continues to teach me lessons. Her death taught me to cherish people, I know it is cliché but it is true. I think it was Kanye West who said to give people flowers while they can still smell them. I am paraphrasing but I think this is dead on (no pun intended). In the meantime I am constantly on the verge of tears that continue to stay hidden and leave me with an big knot in my chest.