A couple of days ago, I learned the news that someone I knew had passed. He was a boy in my year, and although we didn’t know each other very well we had worked together in the past so I considered him my friend. He was born with a heart that didn’t work well, and had an episode after which he had taken it upon himself to live each day trying to be positive and happy, because, as he said, after cheating death once your perspective on life changes completely.
It breaks me to know that this time, he couldn’t make it through. The morning after I learned the news, I half-expected to see that lanky boy walk through the door of the facility with that cheeky smile of his, slapping his friend’s back and laughing and exclaiming: “why so glum everyone?” He didn’t.
I have sat here for a long time trying to come up with the best way to honor his life, which ended way too soon and too unfairly. People like him—kind, helpful, good-hearted people—deserve to be honored in the best way possible because there are so few of them.
But I figured that the best way to do that, to give his death some justice, is to adopt the same philosophy he had: to try and make the best of each day, even the rainy Sundays, and even the grey and gloomy Mondays. Because you only get one life and you owe it to the people who don’t have that chance anymore, people like my friend, to live it to the fullest.
Do what you love. Take that plunge you’ve been too afraid to take; take that chance you keep on hesitating over. Just live, and give it all you’ve got. End every day feeling like you couldn’t have done anything differently; end every day feeling empty, serene, at peace.
You owe it to yourself; you owe it to people like my friend. Give their lives a meaning by living yours. Because if there’s one thing I learned by watching him, it’s that no matter how bad it gets, you can always smile and see the bright side of things. That no matter how hard it gets, you can always find the courage to make the people around you laugh, and that’ll make you forget your own worries for a little bit.
I hope that by doing so it makes it all a bit less unfair, a bit less raging. I hope that somehow it will make it easier to cope with knowing that sometimes life just doesn’t make sense. He didn’t deserve this. He was so young, and bright and loved. And that’s how we’ll always remember him.
Rest in peace, M.
Author: Ludovica De Gaudenzi
Email: [email protected]
Author Bio: Ludovica – twenty-two year old Italian architecture student living in the big city. When not eating pizza or making models, enjoys drawing and writing about pseudo-philosophical things. Generally known to make very cynical and inappropriate comments around people and also strongly believes in brutal honesty; has a strong passion for sarcasm, bad jokes, oversize knitwear and walking about looking for new places and inspiration.
Link to social media or website: http://instagram.com/ludoveeca_
