so much for lightening up….
April 29, 2008 by Maggie, dammit
Let me ask you something.
A young man dies unexpectedly, tragically. The funeral home is packed with mourners, the vast majority of them friends, because his family has been disintegrating for years… his parents are long divorced, his father suddenly disabled. There was abuse, abandonment, alcoholism; a cornucopia of woes to feast upon his entire truncated life. Everyone is devastated. He was gentle and fiercely loyal to his devoted circle of friends.
After the service, after the mourners have gone back to their cozy homes and functional families, officials take his remains and deliver them back to the morgue. And that’s where he lies now, a body in hock.
His family can’t afford to bury him. His friends are planning a fundraiser for next week.
I am choking on sadness right now. Are you?
If you are, let me ask you this:
Does it change anything for you to know it’s this kid?
.
I think this post is very appropriately filed under “God is giving me the bitch slap again”. I’m feeling the sting, too. (But I still think you made the right decision the other day).
No, sadly it didn’t change anything. A young life, tragically taken with one stupid, or many close calls, but one stupid move. What’s hard is to believe the mourners going home to their functional lives, what will they take from this? Will they drive drunk? Will they judge him? Will they make any changes in their lives, functional or not. Will they realize that life is so short and to not take each day for granted? I want to go hold his hand.
I honestly have no idea how to feel abt this. I’m not nice, you know, so that is certainly factoring in on my level of sadness.
Sigh.
I’ll be at the fundraiser, though. Of course I will. Sometimes this little town really tugs at the blank area where my heart should be…
It’s all just tragic, isn’t it?
You know, life is just so not fair. I think that’s the part that sucks the most when kids die. Some people who deserve to die live on, and some people’s lives are just a constant state of misery and then they die far too young.
I can totally relate to your feelings.
Oh my! No, my feelings wouldn’t change knowing it was him. That’s still sad.
No. It doesn’t change the fact that it is a very, very sad situation. One that makes my heart hurt.
Nothing changes.
He deserves a dignified last few hours, regardless.
Sad.
Nope. Doesn’t change a thing. Everyone deserves to be buried. And what a culture it is when that isn’t a given.
We all get to where we do along particular paths. It doesn’t negate responsibility for our actions. But it explains a lot. And this post explains a lot about how that young man got to where he did on his path. And my heart hurts for him and for his friends and for the life he lived. And the fact that it is over. And that as a society, there isn’t the simple guarantee that you’ll be buried after you die.
Oh dear. Wish life wasn’t so busy right now, or I’d join you for the fundraiser.
Nope. I had a kid a year die in my grade from 6th grade to 12th (most were suicides, though) and it’s just a bad scene when the funeral is for someone that should have so much time left and stuff to do.
If anything…it makes it more tragic to me.
yuck.
Wow.
I’m with sizzle. I think it makes it more tragic - if that’s possible.
Absolutely nothing changes. Everyone has at least one redeeming quality that entitles him/her to a dignified rest. It’s deplorable that, in our culture, such dignity is commodified.
Tragedy bleeds from this and sadly in these types of situations it just seems to get worse. It’s very sad and unfortuneatly will happen again. It’s pitiful to be ripped from the this way.
And not to lighten the tone but don’t they have funding for people who cannot afford burials?
i don’t know. I DON’T KNOW!
no. because a life is worth it. but maybe not this one…no, i don’t mean that. do i? no. surely not.
ugh. and here’s where i’ll be spinning for the rest of the night…
All cultures deal with death differently, its true, but if it helps you deal- its quite common for the body to stay in hock, literally and/or metaphorically, until the kin has enough time and funds to properly ritualize the event.
Oh, wow. I can’t even imagine. Can you imagine being this family? And I feel bad when I can’t pay for all the Christmas gifts I want to give them….talk about perspective.
of course, I knew the connection already so it doesn’t change how I feel about him and his lost life. I only wish somebody could have reached him and told him it doesn’t have to be that way. I only hope his death will reach somebody else and tell them it doesn’t have to be that way. Maybe that was the plan he had when he came to this life, maybe he chose to make that sacrifice so that someone else could learn to choose differently. Maybe someone has seen that it doesn’t have to be that way. I can only hope.
Unfortunately no, it doesn’t change a thing. Where is the honor for the family? Could nothing be done to help his family/friends come to closure earlier? A body in hock…..it’s sad to think that no arrangements could have been made and that one must have a fund raiser to bury a loved one.
How sad! No, it doesn’t make any difference who it is.
Doesn’t your city cemetery association have a fund to help?
I don’t know if it does.
I’m really struggling here. I think my anger is finally dissipating and I’m starting to grieve.
I feel very, very sad.
Nothing changes as someone loved him and they are in pain right now. All creatures deserve a respectful burial.
BUT….I’ll be the one to say it (and maybe take the hit) what if he’d killed an innocent person? What if he’d killed someone’s kid? Would that change it? No, but it’d sure make us rightfully angry.
I’m not from Wisconsin, but my small, rural Indiana town isn’t any different. It’s funny because I don’t ever go into a bar here in Florida, but each time I go back ‘home,’ the first place I head to is the local bar. That’s just where they all meet. There’s no other place.
My son lives in Iowa. His fiance’ is a bartender in a really small, rural town. I know they drive home after drinking. They are 26 and 23. I worry every single day about this.
Part of me thinks it’s great that he has friends good enough to have a fundraiser to bury him. The other part of me thinks that if they were such good friends, why did they stop him from driving drunk. All of it is just too sad.
doesn’t change one thing. Not one. Do you know where to donate?
I’ll be there.
I actually have the answer to the city cemetary association question. (Why? Because I’m the last staff writer of our little newspaper standing, THAT’S WHY. Oh, you didn’t ask, did you?)
First of all, there are no funds for the “city” because we’re a village of less than 7,000 people. We have no money for ANYTHING, much less a cemetary. The entire township has cemetaries that are vitually hemorrahging money - they sell on average six plots per cemetary per year, which is not even enough money to maintain landscaping costs. The biggest cemetary is staying afloat precisely because of its central location, but it too is having financial problems.
It would be lovely to have a cemetary association that could handle and afford to help out families in need, but sadly, our beautiful little village simply doesn’t have the dimes.
Um also, “cemetery” is one word of very few that I spell incorrectly EVERY SINGLE TIME. Dammit.
Fortunately for me and other drivers, when I was 19, I drank and drove and had a wreck that totaled my car. I came out uninjured and that was my wake-up. No one could have convinced me not to have done it before that happened. I don’t know the answer to the problem other than making it so expensive, like cigarettes, the teens can’t afford it or mandatory breathylizers in every car a teen drives so it won’t start.
God loved this child and he should be buried properly, so I’m glad he has friends to try and raise the money. This type of thing should be covered by a State fund, hence the government. We owe it to our children.
And I have to edit Debbies comment a bit “breathylizers in every car, period, so that it won’t start”.
It changes nothing. That poor kid didn’t get set on that road in a vacuum - his family’s state of disintegration, and the underlying causes are part of the recipe for this kind of tragedy. I’m glad there will be a community effort to do the right thing by him. Its always sad when a kid throws his life away and no one is there to stop him.
That is horribly sad, on so many levels.
Seems to be the obvious extension to his sad life really. But for the record I’m with your Mom. What a wise lady. I really want to believe she’s right.
It’s heartbreaking all the way around. I think you can be angry with someone for a stupid move that ends tragically, and still mourn his life, still miss the person. I guess that’s the beauty of the human psyche. My only hope is that it reaches someone. Just one person who will not to get behind the wheel the next time it’s their turn to choose.
This is awful, Maggie, and knowing which young man you’re talking about changes nothing. As others have said, he doesn’t deserve to be held in cold storage until someone can pay to have him buried. So sad.
Like Captain Steve, we lost a kid a year from 7th grade to senior year in my school, most to car or motorcycle accidents (one to alcohol poisoning), and knowing they should have known better than to get behind the wheel didn’t make their deaths less tragic, didn’t make the hardship on their families any less painful, didn’t make our tiny town’s response any less heartfelt.
Hang in there, Maggie.