12

March

2009

Living Life

Posted in : Car Accident, Life

It has now officially been one year since my cousin Teresa was killed in a car accident. The accident was the fault of the other driver, who was also killed. My two cousins, Teresa’s sisters, were both hurt and one needed to stay in the hospital for weeks. I should spend today mourning, but instead, I spend it in a day of celebration – tinged with sadness. Teresa was beautiful, wonderful – I celebrate her life, I do not mourn it. And I am grateful to the lessons she has left us all to ponder.

Teresa was everything I wish I was or had been. She was beautiful, smart, independent, popular… She was in a field of study and later work that she obviously loved a great deal. She was successful at her job also, having done special effects for several made for tv movies and two big screen releases, even though in one only her studio was credited, not her specifically. She loves her family and was their rock; when her younger sister discovered she was pregnant, it was Teresa she turned to, and Teresa who supported her when she revealed the fact to their parents.

I remember so clearly the day she died. It was a day off work for me, and my Dad told me that Teresa had been in an accident. I figured everything would be okay and kept on playing World of Warcraft; my Mom came home early. Then I realized it may be serious. We spent the day getting phone updates and watching the news. I remember reassuring my Mom that Teresa would be fine, as we’d just heard that there had been two fatalities in the accident.

I remember the call so clearly. We were in the basement, Mom and I. The phone rings, my Mom has it before it’s even done, clutching it tightly. I stop talking, and there’s silence. Then my Mom just starts chanting over and over and begins to cry. “No no no no no!”

My grandfather had died the previous summer and my father’s mother a year or two before that, and Grandpa eight years earlier. I was not experiencing the death of a family member for the first time BUT I was experiencing the sudden death of someone I loved for the first time. It hit me so hard, right in the center, that I couldn’t even breathe. I just reached out and held my Mom and cried with her.

The next several days were really difficult. The Funeral Home’s operator was insensitive and the Funeral Home cheap and far too empty and bright. Having been able to see recently the splendor, grace, and compassion of the staff and settings at the Lougheed Funeral Home here in Sudbury, I was shocked by the barren, stingy and confrontational manner of the Funeral Home in Minden. The Funeral Director even threatened to call the police on my Uncle, who was merely upset that Teresa’s boyfriend was able to see her first, before family. Grief makes people insensible, and if the man had more than a mail order diploma in grief counselling, he’d know so.

Ashlee was so brave. She was the one I think who suffers the worst in this, as she was in the car and woke up from the accident first. She was trapped beside Teresa and Teresa would not answer. She could not turn and Kimmie would not answer. She must have been terrified, knowing she was pregnant also. Afterwards, all the curious people were discreetly trying to get a retelling of the events. I only got them because she cried in my arms after fleeing them.

She got up in front of the church the day of the funeral (which was beautifully done). She stood there and said that Teresa was wonderful, she was everything, and that when she found out she was pregnant (she was sixteen at the time) and she was too scared to tell her parents, Teresa was there for her.

I came home from the funeral events emotionally drained. I came away looking at my own life and thinking that it had been a huge waste. I was still overweight, still in a dead end job, still barely coasting in life. I was single, I spent all my time playing World of Warcraft, and I had few friends, and none nearby.

In that, Teresa left me – and everyone who looks at it – a wonderful gift.

Teresa lived her life. That makes it so much more tragic that she died so suddenly, so unexpectedly, so unfairly. Seeing her funeral crowded with people so that there was standing room only showed how many people were touched by her life. She gave us a beautiful example of what it is to LIVE.

Just live. Not coast by, not make do – to LIVE every second, every breath. To LOVE LIFE.

I quit my job later that year and found a different one that is more challenging.
I moved out of my parents home after three years.
I started actively trying to make friends in my life, not through the internet.
I still play WoW too much, but I’m also playing it with people I know in real life.

Nothing is going to bring me down, not even grief that it’s been an entire year. I refuse to remember the horrid day, a year ago. I mourn – but I rejoice – because she LIVED her life for every second and gave unstintingly, and would want us all to celebrate her life rather than mourn it. She would want us to live.

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