Today marks the 5th anniversary of the day one of my closest friends died.
I can't believe it already has been five years because it still feels like it just happened. I remember everything about that day so clearly - the way it rained like mist for that entire Tuesday, the exact outfit I was wearing to school and the pajamas I changed into when I went home that morning to cry in my bed, painting the senior rock in his memory, watching the reports on the 6 o'clock news with my friends.
I remember the conversation between Cookie2825 and DarkAngel8745 the night before; our marching band trip to Atlanta the weekend before; his excitement after our first band competition where we won every award; his asking me to Homecoming as a back-up date for us both; listening to Incubus with him on the bus home from band camp and learning his favorite song from the CD was one that I hated; his cologne that I could always smell when I gave him a hug.
Now all I have left of Mike is the memories of the three months we were friends and a sweatshirt of his that he had left in a friend's car.
I had dealt with death before when I was 6 years old and my best friend's mom died and when I was 13 years old and my grandpa died. But Mike was only 15 - he wasn't supposed to die.
Mike was driving alone just after midnight in the rain without a license. He wasn't wearing a seatbelt. He made a few wrong decisions and received the ultimate penalty, which served as a lesson for the rest of us.
A million what-ifs about the night he died run through my mind whenever I think about it.
What if he had worn a seatbelt? What if it wasn't raining? What if I had called him when I couldn't sleep? What if there had been a stop sign at that intersection? The road curves and the left turn is really sharp - a stop sign should have been there before the accident. Why did someone have to die so the city would put up a stop sign? Why did it have to be Mike?
The questions drive me crazy because the answers will never come.
The answers I got from the experience were ones I already should have known - life is fragile and we are not invincible. Don't hesitate to let someone know that you care about him or her or you might miss your chance.
I also got answers to questions I wasn't ready to ask. If I'm going to be a journalist when I grow up, how will I report on stories about death? Definitely with more care than anyone in Columbus gave to Mike and my friends who were interviewed for their lead stories and front-page glorifications.
I can't do anything to change what happened, and my life has been going pretty well in the past five years. But the memory of that day - the hardest day of my life - will be with me forever.
Oct. 24, 2000, is best described with final lines of the poem one of my friends read at a memorial we had for Mike a few days after he died. From Footprints in the Sand by Mary Stevenson: The Lord replied
'My son my precious child I love you and I would never leave you. During your times of trial and suffering
when you see only one set of footprints
it was then that I carried you.'
- Cheryl Sadler is a Post copy editor and a senior journalism major. Send her an e-mail at cs334202@ohio.edu
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Cheryl Sadler
