Teenage Suicide, New Friends, and Fireworks

Yesterday was a whole bag of bizarre and had a quality of surrealness to it that is hard to describe. It was supposed to be a day of fun, gardening, some studying and maybe having dinner with friends after. Didn't quite turn out that way.

After gardening up a storm earlier I decided to take a nap. I was worn out (especially since my cat wakes me up at 5:30 every morning). and laid down for about 20 minutes until I heard screaming. At first I thought it was the little kid upstairs who was getting in trouble or being grounded or something and he was fighting back. Then I realized it sounded more like animal rage. This time I was convinced someone was beating him. I ran outside thinking to find out what I could hear from my courtyard and both mom and kid were outside screaming and crying. It was at that point the fire truck arrived along with ambulance and soon enough there were 6 cop cars in front of my apartment complex. Her teenage son had committed suicide while the mom and little brother were at the store. As I piece together the story apparently they had had a fight about doing chores. I have no idea if he had been planning this for ages or this was sort of a "fuck you mom" thing. I'm not sure the family will ever know why, I certainly don't ever expect to learn it.

I ended up taking the little brother to my place and sitting with him for several hours while we watched movies, played video games and both police officers and trauma professionals questioned both of us and the mom was out front talking to the police. What a cool kid he is. He hugged me, held my hand, talked to me and at one point said "You're a good friend, thank you". All this from someone under 10 that I'd just met, basically. I even made us peanut butter n jelly sandwiches, but he wasn't too keen on the nectarine jam. What can I say, I don't have a ton of kid-approved foods in the house. I don't envy this sad turn of events for him or the rest of his family. For the little brother, I know he's got a long road ahead of him, and I hope that he's able to see past the guilt at some point in his life and learn and grow from this tragedy. It will be incredibly tough but I hope for the best. And yeah, I do hope we get to play video games together again.

After they left and took off to nearby family I walked across the courtyard to my neighbor. First thing she asked was "Want a glass of wine?" I loved her already. We sat and talked about this whole ordeal for awhile. Neither of us really knew what was going on internally and we will probably never know. She and I probably talked for a good hour, at one point coming back to my place and discussing color choices for my living room decor. She was remarkable. We're even planning a picnic sometime soon. Out of tragedy comes new friendship. I'm grateful for that.

And to cap off the night, as I'm on a video call with a friend I hear loud banging. Wasn't quite gunshots but it was still bloody loud. Turns out, local college had a fireworks display going on. It was a magnificent show and just what I needed to cheer me up and to bring a sense of happiness back.

Our lives are not written in stone. We're not guaranteed a certain number of years. Some of us are taken early and some of us choose to go early. For whatever reason this teenager chose to leave our world, I hope he's making sense of his pain and is able to forgive himself enough to move on.

The sun is still shining..
Blessings