A year ago today...

 Today I will be making my down to a small college town to remember my dear friend Matt, first drink is for you friend...

 25

When you are young and you are learning to speak it is a feat to be able to count to 10. People rejoice and may even hand you a cookie, then you learn what comes after 10 all the way up to infinity.


Now count to 25.

I'll wait.

See didn't take to long did it. I seems like such  a small number when you compare it to in the infinite group it is in.

Maybe if we think in something longer like years, does 25 years feel longer, sound longer?

Think of all you can accomplish is 25 years? School, marriage, kids, career, success.

But what if that is all you had? 25 years to live a life, could you do it?

This past week was the hardest I have had in a while.

My dear friend passed away on Thursday.


He had been in the hospital since May but we all tried to keep  positive because he was in good hands and in the beginning he had been showing signs of improvement.

He went in to the hospital with pneumonia and for every step forward he took two steps back,  there were complications and he was transferred.


I got to see him before he went down hill and we were laughing, eating pizza, and he showed my friend and I the suit he was going get for his sisters upcoming wedding. The suit was fab and although we were laughing, I couldn't help but pray, as he sat there with a mask of oxygen on that it wouldn't be the suit he would be buried in.

Very shortly after that visit he was transferred to 2 more hospitals and we weren't allowed to see him any more. We got random updates from family and when we found out that he was put in an induced coma so he could heal and have a machine breathe for him we were all scared.

When he went in to the coma, the news was at a standstill no change, better or worse. We still couldn't see him and his favorite season was more than passed when we found out.

On Wednesday I got a text from my friend Erin that he was going to be taken off of the machines the next day and I better get to the hospital to say my goodbye. I know when the circumstances what they were I should have prepared myself for this but I didn't. I left work when I could, still not wanting to believe that this would be the last time I talked to my friend. We had drifted apart over the years but we found each other again on the most important day of my life. He was the hair stylist for some of my girls, and me when my hair started to go crazy. He was one of the first people to see me and one of the last to leave the dance floor that night. Our friendship had ignited again and unbeknownst to us we had both told our friend Erin how much we had missed each other and how we couldn't wait to get close again.

When I walked in to his room, gowned up and gloves on, I was struck with a tsunami of grief. The Matt I remembered was laughing and eating pizza with me. I was thrown in to a tailspin to see him there motionless, hooked up to machines with tubes everywhere. The beeping of the monitors was deafing as I as I walked up to where my friend laid. I was an emotional open wound, this was happening way to quickly, he was fine the other day they couldn't be happening, I could not be standing in the room that my friend would never see the outside of, that he would die in. I had been told that he was conscience which made it 1000 times worse. Did he know this was it? Was he shouting inside his prison body that he wanted to live? I know the moment I was next to his bed the answer.

  He had faded away and only his eyes remained, when I took his hand and stared in to his beautiful eyes there was a moment of contact, a moment I knew he knew I was there. I told him stories about the good times of 6th grade when we met, how happy I was that he was such a big part of my wedding day, and mostly how I regretted our friends drifting apart in the first place, I wanted him to know that he was always in my thoughts all those years were didn't talk, That I did and would always love him and how mad I was that I had finally found someone to do my hair... we all laughed about that one.

I stroked his head, and said my goodbye to a wonderful man.

As I wiped my tears and hugged his mom she said "25 years just isn't long enough."

It was like someone was strangling me I was fighting the tears so hard.

I drove home in silence.

When I finally made it home I scrubbed my hands raw to get the hand sanitizer/rubber glove smell off my skin. Immediately I hopped on his facebook and started to look through his pictures, I wanted to remember his eyes full of life, a smile on his face a beer in his hand.

I began to sob.

The next day he passed away peacefully surrounded by his family. And that day the world lost an amazing person. One that was absolutely fabulous.