Carpe Diem (seize the day!)

It took me half the day to realize that there was in fact a significance about todays date, the 10th of June.

Over time I guess it gets away from you. But then I still remembered... I guess you can never forget completely.

9 years ago today. 9 WHOLE YEARS. that is a whopping 3287 days, 468 weeks or 108 months.
That much time ago today there was a girl in my year level at school who passed away. she died. she was just 14 at the time.

how did she die? it was actually the queens birthday long weekend and she was visiting a friend, she had a sudden severe asthma attack, they rushed her to the hospital and did all they could but she died.

I can still remember the eerie feeling at the schoolyard that morning this day 9 years ago. The previous year an older male student had committed suicide and this particular morning was reminiscent of that time.. The same eerie feeling that there had been the day the news of his death broke.
The students around the school were quiet and just not the same as usual. The flag was flying half mast. The 9am bell never rang for the first class.

Then there was an announcement for an assembly and a briefing from the teachers. I don't know about everyone else but I knew what was coming; bad news. I glanced around the assembled students trying to guess/predict whose name was about to get mentioned. Not a clue.

And then they said it. Some of the girls in my year who were her friends but obviously hadn't been informed yet collapsed to the ground. Some people behind laughed.

I couldn't believe that somebody my age could die like that. It happens everywhere but until it happens to someone you know you don't really 'get it'. How temporary this life on earth really is.

There was counselling available and the multi purpose room was available for crying and grieving and dealing with this tragic news. A lot of people missed class that day. We made a tribute poster with words about her. On a humungous sheet of white paper. We drew pictures and wrote notes to her, in her memory.

They played her favourite songs over and over and over on repeat. For 2 whole days.
'heal the world' and 'man in the mirror'.
the heal the world track kept skipping, as if it were her saying stop sobbing and get on with life.
man in the mirror still brings a tear to my eye to this day when I hear the intro music. 9 years after.

I was really affected by this tragedy. For my own reasons.
She was not a close friend.. She was in only one of my classes, and occasionally we spoke in the school yard. One of my crushes was a friend of hers and when I think of her I often remember back to the day I wanted to talk to him and she and a mutual friend (who sadly is also now living in the after life ...but that's a whole other story..) tried to force me to go and talk to this older guy crush at lunch time. And when I got over there I was too shy to say more than hello anyway.

The same mutual friend from that memory was with me when we were grieving for her. We left the room where all the others were hugging, crying, remembering and went to get a drink from the canteen. When we returned the other girls had closed the dividers in the middle of the room, locking the 2 of us out.

How disgusting is that to do. Sure they were her best friends and hurting, but the pure bitchiness of that act, grieving or not it shook me to my core. They were basically saying that we had no right to be upset. Um, SOMEONE IN OUR YEAR LEVEL JUST DIED. Are you kidding me? No she wasn't my bestie or anything but I still knew her. Holy crap teenage girls can be so damn nasty.

To me she was an acquaintance. She had green hair and she wore it short and spiked up in a trendy style. She was not the centre of attention type, but she was popular. She could dance an awesome moon walk and loved Michael Jackson. She had many friends. In my head I didn't even like her. In my head I hated her. Especially after she borrowed something personal from me in class and never gave it back. So silly.

I felt sooooooooooooooooooooooooo guilty for a long time that she must have died thinking that I hated her guts. But I never told her that, I never acted like it. She never knew what I was thinking about. And in reflection its all just high school drama. Sadly, I actually learnt a lot more about her after she had died. I respect who she was and what she could have been.

'She was a humanitarian' this was the first line of her tribute page in the year book. Humanitarian, a caring person who donated to charity and did things like shave for a cure. That was my kind of person. I didn't even know. Here I am 9 years later and wondering if she were still around what she could have done. She could have been the next generation Oprah or something. But her life was just stopped. Just like that.

Her funeral was sad. They played her favourite songs. They had photos of her on a table. Her best friends wrote letters to go into her coffin. Her mum collapsed in grief in the middle of the aisle. Her sister at the time only 10 or 11, going through one of the most horrible experiences imaginable. We released balloons of her favourite colour. That was it, she was gone, she was never coming back.

The moral of this post is that life is short. And ever since that day I've vowed to live my life the best I can. In honour of all the people who haven't had the chance to do the things they want to do.
And she was just the first of many people who've meant something (even if a tiny part) in my existence who are already on the other side. So many good people who've gone too young.

Carpe Diem. SEIZE THE DAY!

One day I'm getting a tattoo of this or something similar. In all of their memory.

R.I.P Kate.