Not only was work tough today I log onto the internet afterwards and see everyone I know mourning the loss of a girl I went to school with and pretty much grew up with too. She died last night in a head-on collision with another vehicle on Highway 46 near where I live. Its nickname is "Blood Alley" due to many people over the years getting killed in accidents, James Dean included. My family and I have had our fair share of close calls while driving on that highway too. She died at the scene while the guy that hit her is in the hospital with major injuries.

I wasn't close to her, but we had a few classes together in high school and middle school and she was always in a happy mood and liked to make others laugh. She was a good person too as she never got into any trouble at all.

But yeah, crazy stuff. You never know what could happen.

It's an odd feeling, ain't it.

Have you ever watched someone die?
In person?

It really changes things.

I watched a boy get hit by a bus once.
He was riding a bike, and it came and struck him head on. When the paramedics arrived he was already gone.

I stood there and watched until they had taken him away, his blood still on the street.
It was just outside of a football stadium, where we were about to play.

I put it back in the corner of my mind, and played our stand tunes, and tried to focus on the marching drill, but that night I didn't sleep, or get on the internet, or distract myself.

I lay awake all night staring at the ceiling.

Really shaking stuff.

I've watched several people go throughout the year. By the time they reached a dying state I was too sick myself to see them, and was stuck in my respective ward for sanitary purposes. I never watched them until the last moments, but I was there for those month long crawls where what disease they had wittled the last of what they had left away down to nothing. I only recieved news of their passing by loose word of mouth some time after they were already gone. They're all still there on my head when I wake up.