text: The first time I experienced real death was when one of my classmates passed away. I was never really close to him. We chatted from time to time, but it was rare. I was friends with some of his friends, though, so they were more impacted than I was. I remember everyone from school came to the service. People who didn't even know his name were there. Pews full of young teenagers watching as the family wept while the boy's short life was sealed away in a wooden tomb. I remember my friend, sitting beside me in the church, eyes clouded with tears, listening as the preacher told us about him. How good a boy he was; how he was in a better place; how God had a plan and everything happens for a reason. But I know none of that mattered. Truth be told, nobody wants to be told that their 14-year-old is in a better place. They just want their son in their arms. Alive and well and that's all they want at that moment. They'd apologize for all the things said and for those words not said and tell them they love them. But he wouldn't hear. He couldn't. He couldn't hear his mom crying in the first row. The crack in her voice when she told everyone in the church that he was a wonderful boy, or when she could barely walk away when the coffin was fully submerged in the dirt tavern. My friend sat beside me in the pew, his eyes clouded with a grief no one our age should have to endure. I remember I sat there beside him, wondering whether he needed tissues, or if I should hold his hand, tell him it was okay. But I didn't. I couldn't. My friend sat there beside me crying while I sat there confused. I was so confused. What had happened? I couldn't even tell if it was real, everything felt surreal, so fake; like I was playing out a dream, or, more accurately, a nightmare. But as we finally stepped out of the stuffy church into the summer heat, my other friend's grandmother stopped me. She pulled me in a hug, and wouldn't let me go. She wrapped her arms around me tightly, rubbing my back. She told me he was gone, but that it was okay, that he was okay now, that everyone else would be okay too at some point in time. She told me it was okay to cry, even if I didn't know him that well. And so I did. There on the steps to the white building, I bawled my eyes out. I cried for the young boy whose life was ripped away from him in a split second, I cried for my friends, his family. I cried at the realization that life is a precious thing. Something that could vanish without caring whether that person was important to anyone, without caring whether that person leaving could break someone down until they themselves could barely be considered living. Death doesn't care who they take, or the aftermath that's sure to follow.