I arrive at my room, not completely sober, concerned about checking Facebook and my email and other nonsense. I check Facebook first, and it opens to show no new notifications, like that's something to be concerned about. The biggest thing I am actually concerned with is how the Blackhawks did, as I didn't have the chance to watch them play the Canucks. Again, another meaningless matter I attended to. The Blackhawks won, by the way.
Finally, I get around to checking my email. Three new emails. Better check Oncourse, now that I logged into CAS, the system that allows IU students to check both their grades and their email. I see my grade for a book report. 83. Once again, not important. Back to the emails. There's one from my communications law class about some review session tomorrow. There's another from a friend, about elections for a student group I'm in. Again, not really important.
There's a third email. One whose subject line doesn't make sense. "RIP Matt." Well, what does that mean? My name's Matt. Perhaps it's about me, but why the RIP? I emailed the professor of this class a few hours ago about an assignment I was turning in late. Maybe this has to do with me. It doesn't. Instead, it's something far more serious and more important. And much worse.
Matthew J. Luademan.
I don't recognize his name. It doesn't recall a face or a voice or anything, really. It's just a name I don't know. But the name's attached to a person who's been a classmate of mine since January. How is that possible, that this was someone I've been in class with twice a week since January? How does his name not ring a bell?
Along with the message is a link to his obituary in the Indianapolis Star. He died last Thursday. And I didn't hear a thing 'til Sunday night. Thank goodness someone in my class let us know, or else I never would have. There's a picture to go along with it, but I don't recognize the face. Again, how is that possible? I've been in the same room with this guy at least twenty times. I search for him, hoping to somehow make a connection that will make me remember something, anything. I sift through some other photographs, and again, there's nothing.
I get up to put on some chap-stick, I've been biting my lips all night and they're in desperate need of repair. WHY?! WHY HIM?! WHY ANYONE?! WHY DO PEOPLE HAVE TO DIE?! I silently scream these things, considering it's 2 a.m. on a Sunday night. I want to cry. I also don't want to cry. I want to yell but I can't, considering what time it is.
It was a brain tumor. I think. The obituary's not really clear.
I don't know why I'm angry. I want to be angry, I guess. I've never really been this close or connected to someone who has recently died. The closest situation I can relate to is when my cat died unexpectedly in high school. But I knew Climber. I remembered when we got him, all the times he'd scratch me, all the times he made up for it by chilling in my room as I did homework, and I also remember when his health started to decline.
Death has never really bothered me, never really hit me like this. Sure, I've heard about other IU students and teachers dying while I've been here, but nothing like this. Not this close up. The only close family members of mine who have passed away died either before I was born or when I was extremely young. I never got to know my grandparents on my father's side. That's something I'll always regret. My father is an extraordinary person, and I know his parents must have been extraordinary people, considering how well they raised him.
The same goes for my mother and her parents, whom I have had the fortune to get know real well. My grandparents, on my mother's side, have been absolutely wonderful. They have survived depressions and wars, somehow managing to raise five truly remarkable children, one of whom being my mother. And as grandparents to several others besides myself, they have done an exemplary job. My grandparents, on both sides, are heroes. The same goes for my parents, and the rest of my family. All of them, every single one of you.
I write my parents. I send my father a message over Facebook, describing what happened and what I'm going through, mentally; my mother doesn't use Facebook, incidentally, and I tell him to tell my mother what I wrote him, that I'll be ok. That's what parents need to hear. And I will be ok. I'll recover. I don't know exactly how long it'll take, but I will.
And then I write this, as a means to cope. I like writing, even though I'm not the best at it. Maybe it'll help. Maybe it's self-indulgent, insulting to Matthew's memory. I hope not, but I don't know. I just need to write about it. Maybe I'll come to terms with it, be at peace with the concept of death. But that doesn't happen. Now I'm crying, really crying, and letting it all out. I'm crying because death is unfair, because I never got to know my father's parents, because I've never truly expressed how meaningful the rest of my family is to me. Crying is often associated with weakness, but I don't understand why that is. I needed a good cry. Sometimes there's just no other way to confront the emotions one feels.
I would like to offer my sincerest condolences to Matthew J. Luademan's family. If you wish to make a donation to the American Brain Tumor Association, you can do so here: https://secure2.convio.net/abta/site/Donation2?idb=1822015821&df_id=1500&1500.donation=form1
I would also like my family to know that I love them very much and that I am extremely thankful for all the love and support they have given me.
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