Track 09 - Wake for Young Souls

10 Nov 2005

This song is about remembering someone from your past who died before their time.

I don't know if everyone had one of their friends slip on to the place beyond life while they were in junior high or high school or not.

Some how I think that there tends to be at least one tragic story for every class that graduates from high school. Some kid who died working his after school job or overdosed on drugs or just passed on doing something stupid.

For my class, and for me, it was my friend Kenny. We were in grade 12 when he shot himself. Well, there is still some question as to whether he shot himself or it was an accident, but everyone knows better than to play around with loaded guns.

Plus, the things that had been happening in his life and the conversations he had been having with people seem to lean toward it having been something intentional, and it was ruled as such.

I remember his wake. It was hard for me. Very hard. In a strange turn of events my family and I had once upon a time lived beneath the funeral home that his wake was at. I know, how many funeral homes have apartments in the basement? I have no idea. It's odd, and kind of creepy in retrospect.

It put me in this strange situation though, where here I was in a place filled with great memories of growing up, all of the fun and games; while at the same time it had become this place of death and sorrow.

I went to the wake with the first girl I ever fell in love with. We are still really good friends to this day. I can honestly say I don't think I would have made it through that time without her. I will never forget the strength that our hug that night gave me.

I had always been a bit of a hard person. More like a rock than flesh and blood. Vacant of most emotion, at least on the outside. That night though, every step I took closer to the casket I felt all of those shields I had built up fall one by one. I remember very distinctly crying that night. I remember this, because I don't cry.

I know that his suicide in some ways saved my life. I know that it prevented my own. That, and the patient friendship of someone who is no longer in my life. Someone that I would move Heaven and Earth for just to be friends with again.

I can remember that some strange year book rule the school had kept him out of the book. He wasn't allowed to be in it because it was ruled a suicide. I can remember my friends on the year book committee, lying to me about it right up until the end. They told me he would be in it. I know they did it to protect me. I would have gotten into lots of trouble trying to get him into it.

I wish the last words I ever spoke to him before he left this life had been different.

Stay tuned for tomorrow's installment “Palm Reader”.