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Sometimes, tragedy really does bring us together

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  • Sometimes, tragedy really does bring us together

    When I was a teenager, I went to a camp for smart kids.

    Strike that.

    When I was a teenager, I was fortunate enough to spend my summers with a group of like-minded people, surrounded by geeks, nerds, and dorks- people who reveled in how different we were from the rest of the world. We took college-level courses over a three week period (one course per session, lest you think we were some sort of uber-geniuses... only a few of us were that level). We congregated during Mandatory Fun and made up filk songs, wrote plays, played chess, played Ultimate Frisbee, and discovered that we were, to the contrary of what we'd been told by bullies, attractive. I met my best friend there (we're still friends). I met my first serious boyfriend there (and second, and third...). We created a fantastic social group, and learned that we were capable of making friends. That we were valid human beings. That we were more than just "the smart kid." In some cases, our lives were saved by that experience. For four years, we learned, played, loved, and grew up. I came out of it a better person.

    This morning, I learned that one of the members of our core group passed away yesterday. We thought he'd been the first... until one of us went looking for other members to notify. Then we learned that another had died in 2012.

    This isn't supposed to happen. We're the young ones, right? We're the ones who were supposed to change the world. We were supposed to be the policy makers, the scientists, the philosophers. We weren't supposed to die young, or be brought down by depression. We weren't supposed to die from preventable diseases or complications from surgery.

    We're mostly still in the same region, so we're talking to each other again. Sharing stories, memories, and our current lives. We're making plans to get together, to reconnect. It's devastating, to do so as the result of a tragedy, but in the end, what matters is that we're refusing to let more friendships slip for distance or lack of time.

    Keep your friends close. You never know what might happen.

    An old quote from camp, one that means love, farewell, and never forget: I love you all, and I love the Passionfruit.

  • #2
    I'm so sorry, KiaKat. I've fallen out of touch with my camp friends, but I would be devastated to hear one of them was gone.

    Offer a drink and a prayer/good thought in their memory?
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