I lost a friend somewhere along in the bitterness
A pharmacy student in my class died yesterday.
It was so sudden, and so fucking abrupt - down to how we all found out. We're not in formal classes this last year like we've been the past five - we're all divided up and scattered across the state, completing our various rotations. We didn't hear about it first - we just got an e-mail, like everyone else in the university, with so little details, so few words, that raised more questions than answered all of our thoughts - what?! why? how? It simply said that he had died off-campus and out of respect for the family, that there would be no additional details. And all I want to know is what does this mean?
And although he was not a close friend of mine and I can't honestly remember the last time that we spoke, I can't help feeling a sense of such terrible loss. We were almost done, damn it, all of us, roughly 110, 115 of us who have fought through the past six years, the endless studying, weeks of no sleep due to clusters of exams in 72 hour periods, final exams, our fucking professors and all of their shit, all of it, just to get to these rotations, to get through them, to start our careers, to start our real lives. We are just seven months away from becoming pharmacists (no, I am, he was) and for him, it is all over. How is that even possible?
I can handle lives ending when they have fulfilled a purpose - when my grandmother died, she left behind three generations of children that have started their own families, written their own histories. But my classmate - not even a friend, but god, a colleague - was so close to the beginning. I'm graduating next year, getting married - it is the ending of a chapter in my life that will be closed forever, but not forgotten, and the beginning to a brand new one. But he will never have it and for that - god, it just fucking hurts. He may have just been one of 110ish, 115ish, but when we walk across that stage, there will be one less. When our class composite is displayed for future decades of pharmacy students to see, it will have one less. We will always be one less because of him - and for that, I will never, ever forget him.
It was so sudden, and so fucking abrupt - down to how we all found out. We're not in formal classes this last year like we've been the past five - we're all divided up and scattered across the state, completing our various rotations. We didn't hear about it first - we just got an e-mail, like everyone else in the university, with so little details, so few words, that raised more questions than answered all of our thoughts - what?! why? how? It simply said that he had died off-campus and out of respect for the family, that there would be no additional details. And all I want to know is what does this mean?
And although he was not a close friend of mine and I can't honestly remember the last time that we spoke, I can't help feeling a sense of such terrible loss. We were almost done, damn it, all of us, roughly 110, 115 of us who have fought through the past six years, the endless studying, weeks of no sleep due to clusters of exams in 72 hour periods, final exams, our fucking professors and all of their shit, all of it, just to get to these rotations, to get through them, to start our careers, to start our real lives. We are just seven months away from becoming pharmacists (no, I am, he was) and for him, it is all over. How is that even possible?
I can handle lives ending when they have fulfilled a purpose - when my grandmother died, she left behind three generations of children that have started their own families, written their own histories. But my classmate - not even a friend, but god, a colleague - was so close to the beginning. I'm graduating next year, getting married - it is the ending of a chapter in my life that will be closed forever, but not forgotten, and the beginning to a brand new one. But he will never have it and for that - god, it just fucking hurts. He may have just been one of 110ish, 115ish, but when we walk across that stage, there will be one less. When our class composite is displayed for future decades of pharmacy students to see, it will have one less. We will always be one less because of him - and for that, I will never, ever forget him.