The Death of a Good Friend

I haven't had to go through the suffering of losing closed loved ones. I am one of those lucky people. My first experience with death was when my grandmother died of cancer. I was 6 years old. I got a little teary. I got a bit upset when I saw my mother and my aunts all crying at the funeral. I didn't really understand. That was the first funeral I ever attended.

The second funeral was my great-grandmother's. I felt so much like crying, but managed to hold it all in. I was sad, but not affected enough to openly cry.

I got a phone call around 11 a.m. on September 26, 2009. The first sign that something was up was simply that this friend of mine was calling. The second was his voice. That was when he told me our friend Keith had gotten into a motorcycle accident the night before. He didn't make it. I understood what he said, but my immediate response was "What?" forcing him to repeat it.

I spent the rest of the day looking through pictures of him, tearing up a lot, but never really crying. I think I went for days without crying.

Our whole group of friends made their way from even as far as Alberta to go to the funeral, which was held on a Saturday. We laughed so much just talking about him throughout that weekend.

He was always so much fun. He loved to drink, especially loved his Captain Morgan. He had the Captain tattooed on his arm. He loved joking around and picking on everyone. We exchanged hilarious stories about Keith, laughing so hard that we were crying. As the Friday night wore on, some of us simply cried.

It made me cry, but still made me happy when I hugged his mother at the wake and she told how much he loved picking on me. Even though I already knew it.

The funeral was hard. It's difficult losing a friend. It's very difficult seeing how much losing someone is hurting their family. It killed us all to see how upset his parents were.

The last time I saw him was December 2008, almost a year before he died. He was the same as always. I had to fight with him to smile for the camera. He only did it to bug me. Who knew it would be the last time.

For at least a month after the funeral, I thought of him daily. I don't think of him everyday now, but when I do, it kind of stops what I'm doing for a moment. It hurts knowing I'll never have him around to fight with to take a nice picture. To joke around with. To hear his crazy stories. To pick on the rest of our friends. But I'm incredible grateful that I can still think of him and smile, and even laugh. We had some great times.

He said he was my pimp and I was his ho.

This was in the middle of a fight where I was trying to get him to smile for a picture. Obviously I won.

It was his idea for us to take one of those family-style pictures where everyone is looking away from the camera. This was the first night we bonded over making fun of our mutual friends, sitting on lobster traps at a bonfire.