Stopping.

Monday night I was stopped in my tracks. I just arrived home from a lecture about Fashion and Ethics. The topic of fashion and ethics is broad, but this discussion mostly pertained to good work environments for laborers and sustainability in production processes. I'm a huge proponent of both, but lectures like this usually leave me sitting there thinking, "Why am I adding to planned obsolescence...the overconsumerism and waste of society?" Always.

I walked into my room and was still on my kick about consumerism when my parents called. They began, "Tana and Monae already bought flowers and put your name on it. Randy and Danyelle bought flowers..." I sat there in the seconds between that and the real news...waiting for what would come next...I knew that something happened...death, but I was waiting...
"Sue's oldest son shot himself on Friday."
This was not what I expected. I expected to hear of an elderly person passing away.
I couldn't breathe.

I babysat for Matt and his younger brother Josh when I was in junior high. He was only 17 years old, a junior in high school. He was supposed to be measured for his prom tux at my mom's shop that afternoon. No one knows why he did it, and there were no signs leading up to it.

I told my parents I had to get off the phone. There was no making small talk after such an announcement. I had to process. I had to cry.

The next day I kept picturing his big brown eyes. Memories of picking berries from the mulberry bush outside our house, taking them to the swimming pool in summer, and pouring him glasses of 100% Juicy Juice.

I saw him this summer at Tana's reception. It was the first time I'd seen him since he was in early grade school. He seemed shy, more so than when he was a child. He stayed close to his dad and brother while I was talking to Danyelle and his mom. Sue and Danyelle graduated from high school the same year.

As I thought about that day this summer I wondered if I could have said anything to him...wishing I could go back. Then I thought of all the people who must be thinking that same thought, his teachers, friends, and family.

Death always makes us stop in our tracks and question life. Suicide is the worst of all. We can't write it off as "his time to go."
Why? Didn't he know there's so much beyond high school?
Life is not empty.
I don't know what to do with any of this.
I'm praying for healing and strengthening of his family and asking that somehow the Lord be glorified here. Somehow.