Death in the Family

(sketch: My friend Jennifer sent me a picture of her painting her first sunset. i made this sketch of her, but in my sketch she is painting a person who is fading away....)

Death is so weird... sometimes you can't really feel sad or glad. it's like losing a game that you never thought you'd win anyway. you can be mad about it, but of course there's nothing you can do anyway. it's such a strange phenomenon of life.. as i know more and more people who die, it's like they are just getting erased, deleted. this week one of my childhood pals shot himself in his bedroom. i spent a lot of time in that room playing with toys and laughing with him (his name is Wade). since he wasn't a famous guy, or very rich, i don't think he will get a big state funeral, so i thought i'd dedicate this entry in my blog to him in loving memory...

Wade was a fun kid who lived down my street and I knew him from when he was about 10 years old. he looked like bart simpson with spikey hair and he was also getting in trouble and making fun of people all the time. one day he asked me to come with him to a neighbor's house and swim. it was a hot summer day, and the pool was so perfectly still... like solid glass, and we just had to jump in disrupt it. there were a bunch of other neighbor kids there and we were noisy and breaking every one of the pool rules: "no running, no pushing, no diving, no food" while we were horsing around in the water i accidentally busted Wade's lip open and that stopped the fun. i remember leaving the other kids and walking him home while he bled everywhere. we sat on his front step while the bleeding stopped and i told him i was sorry. he said, "that's okay" but i knew he was angry. he had a dog named oreo (i think) who was exactly like her master. every time Wade and Oreo showed up at my front door, I'd go play with them. i liked to go to Wade's house. his mom smoked a really sweet-peppermint type of cigarette and the air-conditioning was always on high, so the place had a very "cool" atmosphere. we drank a lot of dr. pepper and played a lot of nintendo. the last time i saw Wade, was right before i moved away. he was probably 16 and he had changed a lot. he looked the same, but the evil-mischievous grin was gone, and he seemed tired. he looked like a kid who finally realized that he wanted other things in life besides dr. pepper and nintendo, but he didn't know how to get them. he looked like that guy who only once got up the courage to ask the pretty girl out and was rejected. but for most of his life, anyway, he was that fast-talking, energetic kid that you can't help fall in love with.

my mom told me this morning that he was dead, and all keeps running through my head is "oh my God, bart simpson killed himself". i am sad, i don't know what to think.