...it's different up close.

So in my English class we were talking about death. Which sounds easy enough. Like, it was very abstract, and from far away, death feels like something that a person can fully understand. A person was living, they've stopped, and everyone was going to die anyway, so it's not so hard to explain. Nothing so cosmic. Nothing so complicated. Literally nothing at all.

Later, one of my best friends told me that the Rabbi's kid from the next temple over had died. He was 19, and a freshman in College, and was either hit by a car or fell off a building. And that was merely weird.

But, understandably, one of my friends from his temple who had been friends with him was freaking out, so I spent lunch with her. She showed me a video of him, and fuck, it turns out I had none him, I just hadn't connected the name and face.

Suddenly it was real. His family would never see him again. He would never grow up to be anything, because he would never grow up.

The amazing thing is that the entirity of the north eastern community of jews is freaking out. Pulling together. They all felt it, and it was actually something inspiring out of something so bad; this one person affected so many people.

It turns out my friend had been friends with him, and they had hooked up one night, and then he ignored her for literally the rest of his life. and then I realized it's not saints who die, it's people. But he's rather think it's the other way around.

All at once I saw jokes about death everywhere. I think there's a difference from death as a character, and death as actually, the absence of life.

Watching my friend, I know death isn't simple. It's not about the end of the life, it's everything about that single life all at the same time, and it's overwhelming.