Someone I know died today.
Texts sent between a friend and me:
"Marisol passed away this morning"
"Wait..what? What happened?"
"Marisol passed away this morning. She's gone Olivia."
"How, though?"
"There was something in her brain last fall. And it sent her to the E.R."
I don't know how to act. I don't know how to respond. I don't know what to say. This is the first time someone I know - someone I know personally - has died, excluding pets. Whenever friends have had friends who died, I haven't been much of a comfort. All I could say is I'm sorry. And obviously, that's not good enough.
I didn't know Marisol very well. I liked her well enough; we talked in high school. Jenn, the friend who just told me about her death, was very close to her. They both went to UMass Boston; they were talking about getting an apartment together. Anytime I saw Marisol outside of school, it was because I was hanging out with Jenn. I've been to her house once, and it made me uncomfortable, like how I feel whenever I'm in a stranger's house. Honestly, I barely knew her.
But I can't stop thinking about this. I know young people die sometimes, but it seems even more unfair when it happens to someone you knew, someone whose car you've been in and whose voice you remember and who hated the same people that you hated. Like a true kid of this generation, I turned to Facebook. Her last wall post was on Saturday. (Her last interaction with me was on my birthday in November.) Her boyfriend (oh god, to be the boyfriend of a girl who just died) just says 'She's gone'. Jenn's status says something about not caring that's she's gone to a 'better place', this place was good enough. Her sister changed her profile picture to a photo of Marisol.
Everything I do or think or feel seems trivial right now. This blog post itself sounds like a whiny, insensitive little asshole.
And, selfishly, I wonder what it will be like when I die. I wonder how this would have happened if it had been me. I don't live at home. I mean, my family would be notified if I got hit by a taxi or something, I guess, but what about the rest of my world? My parents would tell the school. They don't know who my friends are, though. Sometimes Akky and Izzy and I joke that if one of us dies, it's up to the other two to inform the internet. But how does that happen if you simply disappear, if you stop returning calls and texts and IMs? What happens to your life after you die? I think about the people who don't have friends or family to speak of; do they just vanish unmourned? An anonymous, unattended funeral, and nobody to remember them? How is that fair?
Jenn asked me if I'll come up for the funeral. I feel like I have to. I'll probably say something insensitive, like how finals nearly killed me. I won't have anything black to wear that isn't a t-shirt or a sweatshirt. I won't know how to act. I barely knew her; I'll probably cry anyways.
I feel lost.
And I have to finish these final projects today and tomorrow, so I don't even have time to process this, save for the time I just spent writing this entry.
Olivia
