7 Pounds

Watching this movie made me think about death.  I've lived with so much grief and pain over the past year, but, imagine if I had been the cause of Geoff's death!  Imagine if I had brought six other innocent people with him!

It's hard to imagine, but Will Smith did an incredible job making it into a reality.

Memorial Gazebo

I arrive at 10 am

A crowd of people stands around

Building

Talking

I eat a donut and wonder what to do

Do I stand here?  Can I do something?

They laugh and hand me a power drill,

and they laugh some more at how terrible I am

I'm laughing too

Darn that screw!

The sun beams down on what we thought would be rain

It's hot- I take my jacket off.

Roof beams are up!

Time for a cheer and a wave to the video camera

Shovels!  I can shovel!

We'll dig out a ring of dirt

Dig dig dig

Oh wait- we're supposed to dig inside the ring too?

Dig dig dig dig, blister!

I wipe the sweat from my face

It feels good to do this work

Physical labour is soothing.

I hand off my shovel to someone who needs it

More than I do

Carry sod, carry sod, LOOK OUT!

Haha Kevin, you tipped the wheelbarrow over!

Gravel everywhere!

Stamp on the gravel with your feet...

That's ok, we've got a machine for that.

Not working?  Machine's not working?

Stamp your feet, everybody!

Bricks are here!  Everyone line up-

This is an old fashioned relay!

No, I can't carry as many bricks as you can.

I'm a chicken.

Speckles of water fleck the ground 

As the sun is hidden behind clouds.

Keep working- it looks amazing!

Wall beams, Roof Beams, Railing beams

All in place.

Pizza!

Laughter.

Tears.

The sky opens up.  So much for jackets.

Our eyes open up.  So much for tissues.

Soon there will be boards, painted by students

Colourful love messages

On the ceiling

Soon a plaque will say his name

And "See you later"

Because we will

We're here because we love him.

We're here because we care.

Strange Urge

I haven't been to his grave yet.

I don't know why.

I really don't.

Most of his friend have gone several times, and some at least once a month.  But not me.

Why?  I keep asking myself.

All those yellow leaves are still sitting in my garage. I wanted to take them up, but I haven't yet.  It's not like I haven't had the time, as I have had it.  It's not like I haven't had a ride, because my mom says that she'll drive me up any time that I want to.

Was it that I just wasn't ready?  I think so.  I just felt in my bones that it wasn't the right time to go up there.

And now... suddenly I have this ache inside of me that is puling me towards the cemetery.  Ever since the hair shaving (ok, fine, two days ago), I've felt this overwhelming urge to go.  I need to go.  I need to breathe in the air and sit on the muddy ground above his body.  I don't know if they have to tombstone up yet, and I really don't care.

I miss you.

Hair

So, tonight was a beautiful night.

My friend Grace shaved her head to raise money for Osteosarcoma research.  So, I drove up to her town with my dad, into a little portable behind her church.  They were all waiting for me.  I felt so accepted.  We were all drawn there for a purpose... to remember Geoffrey, to commend Grace on her bravery, and to just love each other.

There were a lot of emotions running through my mind as I watched the scissors go "snip, snip, snip" through Grace long braids, and as the razor lowered, I wished that I could get my head shaved too.  There was some kind of strange longing inside of me to have a physical tribute to Geoff, more than just my ankle bracelet and my Mourning Toenail. (More on that later.)  This summer I'm going to shave my head with my friends Hilary and Holly on the 1 year anniversary of Geoff's death, but I wish it had been tonight.

It's really great to be able to spend time around people that understand what I'm going through, people who knew Geoff, who miss him, who still love him.  I find it hard to spend time at my Youth right now, because, although the teens are great, they don't understand me or how my life has changed.  They can't understand me.  But Grace does, the other girls there do, and obviously the Dykstras do.  I felt so accepted.

I got to talk to Geoff's mom one-on-one for the first time since the visitation.  I'm so, so glad that I did.  She is going to invite me over, and I can just talk with her for a while.  Their whole family is so wonderful.  I love the tattoo that John (Geoff's dad) got.  It simply says Geoffrey John Dykstra, with his birthdate, a cross, and then his death date.  I love Laura... she's just an awesome girl.  I haven't really talked to much to her about Geoff, because I don't want to upset her.  I don't really know Caitlyn that well, but she seems to be a lot like Geoff... really energetic!  :D

I'm so glad I went.  I left in tears, but, tears are good sometimes, I guess.

Tears

Once in a while, things happen that make your grief seem all that more real.  I mean, I don't cry about him every night before I go to sleep, but there are sometimes when something sets me off, and I think that my heart is breaking all over again.

For example, the night before my math exam, I was under extreme stress, and so, when I went to bed after a day of fruitless "studying," I just lost it.

Or take last night, when my mom was bent on watching a DVD that our neighbour had loaned us called "The Ultimate Gift."  From the back it looked like a mushy, sappy, chick-flick, and I was in the worst possible mood for that kind of movie.  I used excuses like "I'm really tired," but eventually I was lassoed to the couch and the TV was turned on.  It turned out to be a really nice movie, however, one of the characters was a little girl dying from cancer.  I was a complete and total mess for the entire rest of the movie.

Stuff like that.  It really makes me miss him.

Random thoughts

I am now on a committee thats task is finding a fitting memorial for Geoff.  My best idea so far has been to plant a pumpkin patch, but it's very impermanent.

The Dykstras had a flood at their house.  Geoff's mom was so glad that none of his stuff got damaged.

I still haven't been to his grave.  The time hasn't been right yet, but I do have the leaves ready for when I do.

Time Turner: Visitation/ Geoff's body

We now turn the clocks back almost two months to the visitation.

My biggest worry was that there was going to be an open coffin.  I needed to not see Geoff in death.  It was so important to me to preserve the memories of him being alive, and not him lying cold in a wooden box.

There were so many people there.  The line went through the funeral chapel, down the hall around a corner through a conference room and into the room where Geoff's parents were. Infact, there were so many people I thought there might be two visitations going on at the same time.  Nope.

I cried so much watching the pictures on the big screen TV.  Every single pic had Geoff with a ridiculous face.  It's true.  His dad said that he had problems finding a pic of Geoff with a normal smile on.  The one they eventually used for the obituary was a cropped pic... the only pic I saw that day of Geoff smiling normally.  However, the un-cropped version showed the true side of Geoff... he was holding up a T-Shirt which had his photo on it.  In the photo, he was literally mauling a hamburger, and little bits were flying everywhere.  Even pics that looked slightly normal had something funny, like the one with the banana sticker on his cheek of the pink bow from a present.

When I finally made it to the front the line, my legs almost gave out on me, for there at the front of the line rested the cold empty body of Geoffrey John Dykstra.

The rest becomes a blur with only some sharp memories: seeing the pics of him in the hospital, breaking down in the arms of an aunt, trying not to cry in front of his parents, and stroking Geoff's cold, white, swollen hand.  Brushing the hair off his forehead.  Hugging his sister.  

One other thing made the night beautiful.  It was seeing a picture of Geoff back in grade three hugging his birthday present: the Beanie Baby named Stripes that looked exactly like Harry Potter.  It brought so many memories I had forgotten crashing in like a wave.