Ok…I never really talk about this kind of stuff because it’s a sore subject.
Back in 1994, two weeks before my high school graduation, I was out camping with the guys, sitting around a campfire, sharing what would be some of my last high school memories with my guy friends.
Yeah, I was the only girl camped out around the fire with a bunch of guys. My boyfriend wasn’t there. He was at home. These were just a bunch of guy friends that surrounded me during most of my high school career (and caused many young girls to be extremely jealous of me). I wasn’t one of the guys…I was just the girl they worshipped.
But over the years, they had become really great friends.
While we were camped out by the fire, the name of the guy that I’d been in love with since I was a freshman screamed in my head. It went away just as fast as it had entered into my head.
The next morning, we were all playing basketball and football out in the rain. We came in from the rain after a few hours. While I was sitting on the couch next to my best friend, the phone rang.
Mike went to answer the phone. While he was on the phone, he kept looking up at me with sad eyes. After a few minutes he said, “Ok, I’ll tell her.” He then hung up the phone.
He walked towards me slowly and in his young 17 years gave me the hardest message he had ever had to deliver in his lifetime.
“Kevin died last night. They say it’s suicide.”
All eyes in the room moved towards me.
“Are you alright?” my best friend asked after a few minutes.
“I’m fine,” I replied.
“Are you sure? Because you’re shaking all over.”
“I’m just cold.”
Over the next three days, no one would let me out of their sight.
Friends that I hadn’t seen in months came back home to make sure I was okay.
Why? Because when you meet someone that’s your soulmate and someone that you know you’re going to love for the rest of your life…everyone around you can sense it. They feel that love and how magical it is.
Losing a soulmate to suicide is not the easiest thing in the world to deal with. It takes a very long time to get over.
When I went to his parents’ house after the funeral, his mother was in the middle of talking to friends that had come over to express their condolences. When she saw me walk in, she stopped mid-sentence, walked over to me and hugged me.
She said to me with tears in her eyes, “You have no idea how much he loved you.”
She was right about that. I didn’t know.
It took me 7 years before I could ask why he killed himself. My friends had all made a pact not to tell me until I was ready. They couldn’t believe that I waited 7 years to ask.
Finding out about the demons in his home (abusive father) and how this was his only way out since I was leaving to go off to college in Washington, DC in the fall…you kind of have to sit there and say…YOU BASTARD! He could have come with me to Washington. He could have stayed with my family in the final year if he had to. We could have made things work.
Instead, he made the decision to end his life.
This wasn’t something that he decided to do abruptly. He had put a lot of thought into it. He even said goodbye to me a couple of months before when he came home to visit during spring break [he went to school at an Academy 3 hours away]. I just didn’t know that he was telling me goodbye forever.
He had written everything he needed to say to me in a notebook before he died. It went to the police as evidence, and then it was handed over to his family. I never got to see the notebook. My friends couldn’t persuade the family to give it to me.
Whether they were protecting me or themselves, I don’t know. But I think it would have helped me to heal over the years if I knew what he needed to say to me.
I have always felt that a part of my soul left that night by the campfire. My mind screamed his name because a part of my soul was being ripped from me at the exact same moment his heart stopped from the bullet he fired into it.
It’s been over 15 years since I lost Kevin.
There are moments when I feel his spirit pass by me and I begin to miss him. It also doesn’t help that a song starts playing seconds later that makes me want to cry.
Today, as I was walking through Port Authority, I felt his presence again. And Leona Lewis’ “Bleeding Love” started ringing through my earphones.
Closed off from love
I didn’t need the pain
Once or twice was enough
And it was all in vain
Time starts to pass
Before you know it you’re frozen
But something happened
For the very first time with you
My heart melts into the ground
Found something true
And everyone’s looking round
Thinking I’m going crazy
But I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open
Trying hard not to hear
But they talk so loud
Their piercing sounds fill my ears
Try to fill me with doubt
Yet I know that the goal
Is to keep me from falling
But nothing’s greater than the risk that comes with your embrace
And in this world of loneliness
I see your face
Yet everyone around me
Thinks that I’m going crazy, maybe, maybe
But I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open
And it’s draining all of me
Oh they find it hard to believe
I’ll be wearing these scars
For everyone to see
I don’t care what they say
I’m in love with you
They try to pull me away
But they don’t know the truth
My heart’s crippled by the vein
That I keep on closing
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
I keep bleeding
I keep, keep bleeding love
Keep bleeding
Keep, keep bleeding love
You cut me open and I
Keep bleeding
As I was listening to the song, I had to fight back the tears walking out onto 9th Avenue. All I kept thinking in my mind was how much I missed him.
There are times that I do wonder what life would have been like if he had not shot himself. I wonder if he and I would have ended up getting married after college, had a family of our own.
But as much as I look at a life that I had lost, I also think about the life that became. I think about the path that was created without him. I think about why things happen…and if there really is something behind it all.
Would I have become a writer? Would I even have anything to do with the NHL? Would I have become an artist/photographer? Would I have become a humanitarian?
Would that life even exist if love had lived? I don’t think it would have.
The things that have made me the person that I am now…all of those things would not have existed. But I do believe that I would have been happier if love had survived.
But as fate would have it…he died, love died, and I survived. I became the lotus blooming in the mud. Fate created something better and greater. It created a dream world that has become my reality. I see the world differently. I only see the lotus blooming, not the mud from which it grows. That’s because life is more than just wonderful…it’s magical.
But you can’t help but miss a love that gets abruptly left behind. Your soul grows stronger as the years progress. It heals no matter how much your heart bleeds for the one you lost forever.
