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.

Yellow

I've started a project to take my mind off some of the junk I'm going through.

Geoff and I always liked the same colours.  Me, my favourite colour has always been yellow.  It's been yellow even before I can remember it being yellow.  Geoff always fluctuated between yellow and orange.  When we were little kids it was yellow, but then he went into his orange phase, and I remember us having a friendly argument about it around, I dunno, grade six or something.  He love undefiled pumpkins because of their lovely orange roundness.  However, he came over to the light side again before his death, and joked about being buried in a yellow tux.  To honour that, a yellow tie was around his neck in the coffin.

When I heard that a bunch of people have taken pumpkins up to his grave, I realized that I wanted/needed to do something too.  I haven't been up to going there yet.  So I decided that the time was soon, and that I wanted to give Geoff a gift.  That gift is yellow.

I have been out collecting yellow leaves from every tree I've come across.  Shiny yellow maple, golden yellow birch, orange-yellow, pale yellow, matte yellow, gleaming yellow.  I'm going to take a couple garbage bags up and spread them on his grave so that his will be a glowing yellow island in the dark.

Breakdown

Sorry I haven't written anything. Maybe I will soon. It was just too raw and hurried then. I couldn't put down what I felt.

So, we now jump forward almost a month since the death of Geoffrey Dykstra.
Why is it that I can't stand church? Several reasons.
Church brings back the rawness and the hurt. Songs about God and love, they hurt. The Prayer Request list in Youth School, that hurts too. Reading the Bible: don't even get me started.
The people there are so clingy. I have the "cling-ons" eight year olds that love me to death and actually fight to be the one that holds my hand. AKA: no breathing room. My friends are clingy too. What if I don't want to walk arm in arm? I need my space! It doesn't help that all of them except one have never had any real tragedy in their life. Today's lesson was on the "Storms of Life." The teacher asked us if any of us had had any real storms. No one had.
I'm tired of the kind comments. My mom explaining the situation to people just made me break down. Can you believe some one actually told me that "He's in a better place." TELL ME SOMETHING I DON'T KNOW! Try not to use the carbon copy answers used in situations like this. The only one I think I could talk to would be my minister, and he was in the middle of a crowded room, and there's no way I was going to walk through that room with the tears all over y face. I would get too many hugs and too many looks of sympathy. Or pity. Whatever.
The last thing is that I don't want to be happy. They asked me to go to music practice after, but I couldn't. I didn't go back to church after youth school. I said I had to go to the bathroom, and went outside. To get out of music practice, I just said I had to go home and ran upstairs and started crying. My mom found me, we talked things out a bit, and we left.

So much for church. I'm angry.

Aftermath

Visitation tomorrow.  How am I going to get through it?

Shock

Geoffrey Dykstra

July 8, 1993~August 24, 2008

Newish development

G can't come home.  (That's what I'm going to call him... a nickname from way back when we had out own branch of VFD.)  He's at SickKids in Toronto, and they thought that he would come home after they gave him stuff for the pain.  Not anymore.  He's staying. Apparently he finds it really hard to breathe.

This whole situation has changed now.  Before I was worried that I wasn't going to be able to spend enough time with him when he got home... now I'm worried if I'll get to see him one last time.

I feel sick to my stomach with worry.

I just want to give a shout-out to all the staff at SickKids, and especially in the cancer ward, to thank them for being miracles in the lives of so many teens and kids.  Especially on the behalf of G.  And D, who had cystic fibrosis and died this June.  We miss you, girly.)

Diagnosis

The answer to all our fears is simple.

1.) Yes, it's cancer

2.) It's extremely aggressive

3.) It has spread to his bones

4.) It's non-treatable

5.) He has two months

So, in short, he has extremely aggressive, non-treatable bone cancer and has two months to live.

This can't be happening. 

It never ends... (from other blog, scribbles from Radish)

My friend has a probable diagnosis of cancer.

They don't know for sure, but he does have a massive tumour on his shoulder, and his body has been acting all weird all of a sudden.  They think that it might be an extremely aggressive kind of cancer.

I don't understand this.

I haven't done much ranting at God yet, but I'm sure I will, especially if it does turn out to be a huge, cancerous, aggressive tumour.  Oh great, I'm starting to cry again.  He's only fifteen!  He doesn't deserve this, actually, he's one of the last people in the world that deserves it.  He is the most hilarious, sarcastic, goofy,  and sweetest guy ever (a combination that is not always the best one, but is brilliant when it comes to him.)  He was one of my best friends in elementary school and made life bearable for me in grade five.

It just goes and goes and goes... the Year of the Cancer.  Three people I know have died from it, and two people (or will be two when the diagnosis is firm) have been diagnosed with an extremely aggressive kind.  My dad's best friend, a kid at my youth-group's dad, and a coach from my Orchestra have all passed away.  My next door neighbour and family friend for as long as I can remember has cancer throughout her whole body.  And now this...

Not to mention my Nana nearly dying in February and my oldest friend's best friend dying from cystic fibrosis...

It's too much.

We find out tomorrow.