sometimes i just miss my friend.

The Summer of Ed

            Summer is supposed to be a time where you can relax and enjoy your time away from school and stress.  It is a time to hang out with your friends and make new friends.  It is a time to eat ice cream cones and go to the beach.  Last summer started off like any other, but I could not shake the feeling that it would not be good like all the rest. 

            Everyday last summer you could find me with my cousin, Ashley, who was best friends with Jacob Donovan Edwards, Ed for short.  It is not normally like me to have a negative impression of someone before I meet them, but I personally did not want anything to do with that particular crowd he hung around with. Ashley insisted I needed to give him a chance; I respected her judgment, so I finally gave in and went to his house with her.  When we were at his house I had a blast, and I started to feel extremely guilty that I had misjudged him.  He was nothing like what I had previously thought.

            Over the summer we grew closer and closer and were together almost everyday.  It started to seem like maybe summer would be good after-all; I had a job with Ashley, and I had created a new friendship.  When I completely pushed the negative vibes out of my head, something that still seems unreal happened.

            On August 11, I was supposed to hang out with Ed, but Ashley and I got called into work instead.  I had about a half hour left on my shift.  Ashley had already finished up and was showering.  After her shower she came back into the kitchen with a look on her face that I had never seen.  I asked her what was wrong, and with an empty look on her face she struggled to get the words out, Ed was dead.  I could not believe the words that came out of her mouth.

            My phone started ringing, and it was my friend Chad who had worked for the police station over the summer.  I answered and he told me he was at the scene and that it was true.  He was not supposed to talk about what happened, but he knew how close we were and felt I deserved the true story and not some rumor, which had already started circulating.  He could not tell me much over the phone; he then gave me all his sympathy and told me we would talk about what happened later that night.  I was so distraught and shocked Ashley and I left work.  Hardly any words were spoke on the drive home, we just sobbed in silence, shocked and in and disbelief.

            When I talked to Chad later on that night he told me what had happened.  Ed was up at what we call “the Devil’s Icebox,” which is one of the mine pits in town, with one of his friends.  He ended up slipping off the edge and falling 278 feet to the rocks below.  After he fell, the friend that he was there with ran to call for help, but there was no hope for Ed.  It took the paramedics 2 hours to get him from the bottom of the pit to the hospital.  He had died from internal bleeding caused from hitting a tree during his fall; it was four days before his seventeenth birthday.

            After his death Ashley and I spent a lot of time at his house with his parents.  We all felt it reassuring to sit around and reminisce, help each other be strong, and secretly hope he would walk in the door.  We planned a birthday party for him on August 15 and all of his friends were invited, the day after was his funeral.  Ashley and I made t-shirts for ourselves and one for Ed, and we also got pictures of us and wrote on them to put in his casket. 

            Ashley and I were the first people, other than family, to arrive.  When I walked through the funeral home’s doors it still felt unreal that Ed was gone.  We walked into the waiting area, signed the guest book, and looked at his picture boards.  We then were allowed in and we both froze, unsure if we wanted to accept the fact of where we were.  We walked into the room and as soon as I saw him laying there I burst into tears, I did not know if I could handle it.  When we got to him we placed our things with him.  We each had a moment saying good-bye to our friend, which was the hardest part.  I told him I loved him and that I would never forget him; then I gave him a kiss and walked over to comfort Ashley, who was empty and heartbroken after losing her best friend.

            This was not the first death I have encountered in my life, but it was the hardest to handle by far.  Ed was just a young boy with a whole life ahead of him, and it all got ripped away; ripped away from his family, his friends, and himself.  He never got a chance to graduate, go to college, get married, or have a family.  His parents lost their child and are left with a void for the rest of their lives. There are no more memories to make, or fun times to share with him.  Ed taught me that life truly is a blessing because you could never know when it is over, it does not matter if you are old or a young child with a whole life ahead of you.  You have to live everyday to the fullest and take nothing for granted, and I plan to with the future in my head and Ed in my heart.