I Just Can't Walk Away

You ever get news you can't really process because it doesn't feel like it's yours to process? So not only are you fucked up by the news itself but by your own reaction to it?

I'd decided to go to bed early yesterday because the two previous days I'd been up far too late and I was dragging. So I'm in bed, nice and comfy with my problem ankle propped up on some soft blankets, when my brother calls. I debate not answering because I don't want to get out of bed and look anything up downstairs. But then I decide I should be good and answer, especially since I didn't hear the house phone ring. I answer and he sounds weird, then says the old, "you should make sure you're sitting down."

And then he tells me one of his friends died. Ben lived across the highway from where I work and would come in every so often and we'd chat (when my brother and an old friend from elementary/middle school were dating, we had a whole conversation about how the pair seemed to desperately want a reaction) and in general, he'd become one of the friends who seemed to bring out the better parts of my brother. I won't say he was always respectful of my mom (or dad) but that's only because he was one of the many kids my parents took in over the years and his stay didn't end well. But he grew up and was making the effort to be a good dad to his daughters and to be better than he was before. He was, as they say, good people.

And now he's past tense and it's fucked up.

At the time of my brother's call yesterday (so 10:30am), he'd been found by one of his workers (coworkers? I'm not sure) because no one had heard from him in two days. They'd thought nothing of Tuesday because maybe he was just taking a day to himself but Wednesday and no word for work that morning was weird as fuck. So they went over and found him on the back porch. I later found out a little more info, like his ex was playing keepaway with his kids and he was fucking miserable about it, and that the person who found him was my coworker's brother in law and she let it slip that it was the back porch and he was blue when he was found. She seems worried he did something but my brother thinks it was just one of those genetic flukes.


Then I had to go tell Mums, who asked when told I had bad news, "did _family member_ die?" and I had to tell her not _family member_ but Ben and she was probably more shocked than I was. He was just here helping fix the downstairs toilet so it stopped trying to tip over and had just gone out of town with my brother and his oldest friend. Wtf. He's one of the few people Mums has saved in the phone because he was reliable to call on if you needed help or if you needed to get a message to my brother when he was in a funk.


I won't say the next part is the worst part, because him being gone at all is the worst, but he's yet another friend my brother's lost. And while the boy and I have a complicated relationship, it breaks my heart that his friends keep dying on him.

I had to break the news to three people about Megan's death and it went about as well as one could hope. I believe I got one broken heart, one "wait, what happened?", and one "well shit." The news confirmed that the accident was hers but her sister had confirmed her death hours prior. Still, I was hoping for it to either be a mix-up or for her death to have not been that particular accident for a whole slew of reasons, not the least of which is that what little you could see of her car in one of the various videos/pictures was just... Jesus.

Not looking forward to work tomorrow. I can't even imagine what work was like today, honestly. Or last night, though I'd imagine not very busy considering the main road was closed for most of the shift.

It's strange the things that keep playing over and over in your head. Like the fact that she pretty obviously had just gotten off work early or that because some asshole decided to run, she died when a cop went flying down the freakin' road. Or there's the stupid thought that Megan always did love a man in uniform and I can't/won't say that aloud, but it's also a thought that she wouldn't think twice about saying if it applied to someone else. And I can perfectly picture the look on her face after it fell out of her mouth and the way she'd actually clap a hand over her mouth a second too late to stop it.

It's going to be weird as hell going in and not hearing her shriek, "Right?!" to all kinds of things or hear her laugh at just about everything. Or walking into the tail end of a very weird conversation she'd be having with someone else and the sheer joy on her face when she'd see the look of confusion and wtf on my face. She might have been a less than stellar coworker if you had to work after her (and to be fair, she was pretty shit at the actual work-work part of the job) but she was definitely one of the most fun and definitely the craziest. The year or so she worked overnight will probably be forever burned into my brain for a zillion reasons. Her absolute fear of snakes that Diamond exploited at every turn (and me having to scoop up the "so lifelike!" snakes when I found them before Megan had a heart attack), the way she and I would both respond to pages because all we'd hear was the M and the N and not have any idea which one of us was actually needed.

And then I think about how her group of four that was insanely close for awhile is now down to just two and if it hurts to realize that as an outsider, is it worse for the other two? Or had they just grown apart enough for it to hurt but not be as painful? Not that it matters, but apparently my brain has decided to clear out everything and just focus very intensely on things. Like how mad and sad I am that she didn't get a chance to pull things around and kick her demons in the ass, or find someone to spend either forever or a good, long stretch of time with.

On the flip side, I'm not sure I've ever seen so many people post about a non-celebrity death before. And we're not just talking about short "RIP" messages either. We're talking actual content and pictures and friends just expressing their grief. I hope that at some point that comforts her family because that's a lot of love there.