Life is a Vapor.

Yesterday was a hard day.

Last week, when I was at work, my sister sent me a text and told me that an old friend of mine had been killed in Afghanistan. I felt bad that I didn't feel that sense of shock like I usually feel when someone young dies. I guess in the back of my mind, I always knew it was a possibility, even if it wasn't a reality. I didn't get that sick, sinking feeling when I found out. I was just really sad for his family.

Here's the thing about death. It never feels natural. I sort of want to punch people in the face when they say, "Well, death is just a natural part of life." No it isn't. There's nothing natural about living your whole life ALIVE and then one day being DEAD. Maybe it IS natural, but it doesn't feel like it. So many things in life feel natural. Establishing a sense of autonomy, and leaving the nest, and falling in love...Those things FEEL natural. Death always feels like you got robbed, or somebody attacked you when you were dying of cancer, or someone stole the only child you had. It feels so incredibly wrong.

I guess I'm not that good at expressing how I feel when it comes to death because I always feel so sick when I hear about it. When my grandfather died and I was in grad school in L.A., I called one of my buddies who brought over a pack of Cloves and a lighter. Some of my classmates threw together a bunch of loose dollar bills, wrapped them up in a piece of paper, and told me to buy myself a few rounds on the flight back home. Death shouldn't require someone who doesn't smoke to start smoking or for someone to get hammered on an airplane. Death makes people totally different. Marriages end over it, families break up over it, people steal because of it. It sucks.

When I heard about my friend, I shoved it in the back of my mind and didn't deal with it.

I do that with a lot of things.

Maybe it's coping. Maybe it's a defense mechanism. Maybe it's self preservation. I don't know why I do it, but I do it, and somehow, by shoving things deep in my mind until I can deal with them, I cope a little better.

Over New Years' weekend, I went to Holly Springs, MS, with my bee eff and an older couple who are friends of ours. I survived 36+ hours of football and nonstop man talk, from business deals to sports statistics to whose ex wives were banging business men in the community at NBA games or local restaurants. Sometimes, I felt like I wasn't even there. Not because I was ignored or not included, but sometimes I just sort of zone out and forget where I am. I do this whether or not I'm interested in the current topic of discussion. I just sort of float away into my mind, and I have no idea who I'm with or what I'm doing. I try not to do this while driving.

I obsessed over thoughts of graduate school and was sad when I saw the Rose Parade in Pasadena and felt hopeless when I saw local commercials starring people we knew who sold furniture or reenactments of the Civil War in dreary open fields.

But then, I got that feeling. I felt sick.

"Memphis marine killed in Afghanistan."

And every time I saw my friend's face, I felt sick.

On Sunday night, when I got back home, I lay in my bed thinking about his face. I thought about his strawberry blonde hair and how he used to spike it up when he was a punk rocker and how he had it all military cut when he joined the marines. And all of a sudden, in my bed, in the dark, I started crying.

I think the past few months caught up with me. I couldn't stop crying. I couldn't sleep for most of the night. My hair was all wet around my face, because I was lying there in the darkness with tears rolling down my cheeks and temples and back around my ears.

I kept telling myself that I didn't need to go to the funeral.

"He's not here anymore," I told myself. "It doesn't matter if you go or not."

But I couldn't sleep. Back and forth, back and forth.

I thought about the people I'd see at the church I grew up attending. I thought about having to leave work in the middle of the day. I thought about being really tired from not sleeping all night. I talked myself out of it a thousand times. I said, "You don't need to go. You can't handle it. You'll have a nervous breakdown."

Then I thought about how honorably he died. This was his sixth tour overseas.

When I first graduated from college, I taught second grade at a private school. It was, hands-down, one of the crappiest jobs I've ever had, but there was one thing that I remembered. My class used to write letters to Garrett. I'd have them draw pictures of soldiers and America and all that, and I'd send him the pictures and tell him that we were all proud of him and praying for him. My kids always asked about "Mr." Garrett, and if he'd sent us a letter. He sent me a few, and he always drew pictures of wherever he was so that the kids could see what other countries looked like.

I thought about his big old beat up truck and how the air didn't work and the radio didn't work, and he picked me up a few times in the hot, humid summer, and we'd ride around singing Frank Sinatra songs at the top of our lungs to "make our own radio," sweating our asses off the whole time and laughing at people who would stare at us for not acting more civilized.

I thought about going to eat with him and his sister at Soul Fish Cafe in midtown and about how he showed me his drum set when we were in high school.

I don't know that I'd consider him one of my closest friends or best friends, but we WERE friends, and I spent so many hours at his house, and to know that he wasn't here on earth anymore made me feel so surreal.

His service was at my old church, and I haven't stepped foot in that place in a solid five years, if not more. I knew if I went back there, I'd feel like Cary busting into prom, and everyone would judge me and whisper behind my back what a bad kid I was, just like it was when I was in high school, and they'd all say that I was hell bound in a hand basket.

But all of a sudden, I thought about my PawPaw. My PawPaw is a marine, too, and he served in World War II. He was a prisoner of war for 3 1/2 years in Manilla. He fought for our freedom. He fought for me.

Then I thought about how stupid it was that I was honestly wagering between my own pride and feelings of awkwardness and honoring my friend at his funeral. People sometimes get married 9 or 10 times in a lifetime. I always think it's dumb when people say, "You only get married once!" Well, you don't know that. What if your spouse gets eaten by lions? What if they cheat? What if they tell you they are gay? Then all of a sudden, that dumb statement becomes electrifyingly ignorant. You might get married 10 times in a lifetime. You only get one funeral.

I went to work yesterday and told my boss I needed to leave at 1:30 to go to Garrett's funeral. I started crying at work. I am very good about compartmentalizing my life, but yesterday, my heart and my work blurred over, and I cried, and I was embarrassed, but it didn't matter.

I left at 1:30 and drove up to this tele-evangelist church in a divey area of town and felt strangely eerie and encouraged at the same time. There were marines in the parking lot wearing red jackets and rehearsing songs on their bagpipes and there were freedom riders parking their Harleys all over the lot. American flags lined the entry way into the massive sanctuary.

I couldn't pull it together. I was so sad. I thought about what guts it took for an 18 year old kid to serve his country, weigh the risk, and go for it. I thought about how the last time I saw him a couple of years ago, he told me he was thinking about going to nursing school. I thought about his sister having to open the door at 11:00 p.m. on December 27th and see marines dressed in their greens and tell her that her brother had stepped on an explosive device and been killed for his country. I thought about his "Semper Fi" sticker on his truck. I thought about his camo pants and his sisters and his dog and how I saw his mom at the airport in L.A. one time.

I saw a lot of people I hoped I'd never see again as long as I lived. I saw a girl with a monkey face and her husband who has gained about 50 pounds in the past 3 years who is best friends with my ex who represents a very sad and lonely part of my life that I wish I could forget about and erase forever. But you know what? I didn't care. It didn't matter.

The first person I ran into was one of my closest high school friends. We sat together.

Garrett's nickname was "Bear," and a lot of people brought new teddy bears into the sanctuary to donate to our local children's hospital in lieu of flowers.

I guess I wanted to write about Garrett because I have lost people in my life before and never taken the time to write about who they were to me. I never wrote about the impact that losing them had on my life. My sister has lost two of her good friends this year. I lost two friends to suicide within a one year period, but when I was in L.A., it's like it never happened, because I wasn't here. It's different when you see it on the news and you go to the funeral. It's different when losing a life is a part of yours.

I have never been to a friend's funeral before. It made me think about how obsessed I am with doing something with my life, and not subjecting myself to this lame town and just getting married and having a menial job and being a baby making machine. You never really know when God pulls your timecard. You never know when your time is up. You have to live every minute of your life exuberantly. Life is such a gift. It is such a precious, fleeting, sacred gift. It's hard to remember that when you're on the 405 or 385 or you get rear ended or you can't pay your rent. It's hard to remember it when your depression has stolen your personality or you love someone who doesn't love you or you interviewed 4 times for your dream job and you didn't make the cut. It's hard to remember what a precious gift life is when it doesn't feel worth living; but just because it doesn't FEEL worth it doesn't mean that it ISN'T worth it.

I'm not sure how to live. I'm not sure what it means to wake up and really LIVE. I want to have that. I want to DO that. And I'm not sure how, but I want to start.

I just know that when God pulls my timecard, I hope that I am remembered with integrity, the way Garrett was. Even the mayor came to his funeral. I'll never be able to send Garrett another letter, or tell him that I'm praying for him, but I am still really, really proud of him.