Death makes you different.😐

Greetings, friends,

This will be a rather sad post, so you can skip to the “❤️My favorite things this week”, there it’s all merry and cheer😅.

A few years back I lost probably the closest person to my life, ever! At a point in time when I was very happy and having everything going well for me. I was still very young then, with no knowledge of the real world whatsoever. And just like that, on a morning when everything was as normal as it could possibly be, all was at once dark in the middle of the day. It had been five years since I was last a victim of death, and way back then I was even too young to know what was going on. Now that I reminisce it, the former was just as tragic as this that happened a few years ago.

And ever since, I’ve never taken death as a joke. Whether it be of a random person on the internet or of a close friend or relative. Everytime I hear of a death of a friend or a relative, it would remind me of my own personal experience with death. And the terrible feelings the family go through. It is never an easy ordeal.

And it does impact you in ways you never thought. Just like a disease like HIV or Cancer might not infect you, but it does affect you. And death, oh that just leaves a permanent mark you’ll never get over!

I have a friend who lost a sibling when we were both way too young, and trust me, in all our friendship since we were basically toddlers we’ve never spoken of it once. Maybe coz he thinks I don’t know, but either way, it is in both our best interests that we don’t speak about it. Coz it was so long ago that no one, absolutely no one, ever talks about it. We would be giving death the power to finish us while we still alive.

Another friend, this one even closer, lost the dad a few years past. And I and the dad were close! Man always treated me like a son every time we’d meet. Man made me fall in love with scouting while still young. But death, with its unmerciful fangs, snatched him away from both me and my friend, and the family. And now I always feel indebted to be a good friend and protector to that friend coz I’m sure the dad would love it so.

The freshest of scars, though compared to but a small cut, was of a fellow comrade who died recently in the arms of attackers. The moment I received the news that night, all my mind flooded with scenes of my own as a victim of the tragedy. All I could remember now was 7years ago of how everything transpired. And our minds have this bad habit of giving the most vivid memories of tragic events, yet the most blurry of good memories. And so a mixture of my victimhood scene 7 years ago and of the present tragedy produced a very downhearted mood for the ensuing days. I couldn’t imagine what the family was going through, yet life dictated they had to endure through it. Even though I wasn’t a close friend to the victim, her death affected me via that other death seven years ago due to a little similarity. And so this death, is all uncontrollably interconnected to affect almost everyone.

I say almost because trust you me, there are friends I had who show no remorse whatsoever to death. Other pains, sure, you can be strong against them entirely. But these guys show no compassion nor remorse to death. And I shun them out for good, coz it definitely affects me completely.

I always thank God for my friends who still have their families fully complete as it was meant to be. That, if it is not the biggest blessing, then I don’t know what is. Death has also affected them to different degrees, and they know the impact of it just as much as I do.

It affects your thinking of life; makes you appreciate life even more and to understand just how little time there is to live and love. It affects how you treat people, knowing there will surely come a day when you both won’t be here to hold silly grudges over each other. It affects how you view the world; it can make you see the world as a dark and terrible place with all evil surrounding you. But it can also make you say, “Hey, if I’ve survived this tragic death, then surely anything life throws at me I can handle, or at least fight.” And if it’s the latter it makes you live with a bit of hope to make you squeeze through. It affects how you see alive people; trust me images of dead people rarely leave your mind. It affects almost every other area of your life!

I have never been the same ever since. 7 years later and now is when I’m seeing at least signs of coping well. And I know I am neither the first nor the last to be affected by death, and so like witnesses who have gone before me, I know I have to move on and accept the effects. The world surely has!

The point of all this melancholic reflection?😶

Death - whether dying peacefully in your sleep, or being killed by a wild animal, or killed in an accident, or KIA in war in Israel, or by the terrifying malady of Cancer, or overdosing drugs, or dying of hunger - is the most painful thing known to mankind. And no matter how strong or weak you are, it is just as terrifying and painful. All we can do is painfully accept that it is bound to happen, then move from there. Till our time comes, when all that will be painful about our death is the people we live behind to bear with our own deaths.

*KIA - military term meaning Killed In Action

✍🏽Quote of the Week

❤️My favorite things this week.

1. My latest post✍🏾📩💌 - have you read my Friday’s post yet? This post has blown up my inbox with both people who consider journaling girlish and those who adore the practice. A post that I woke up and decided to write with no prior planning whatsoever is now one of my most read! All I can say is thank you! Cheers :)

2. Video games🎮😛 - those close to me know how much I love video games. Not to the extent I want to though, but I still love them. (My friends still struggle to beat me at a FIFA game since our primary school days😅.) Well this week, I’ve binge watched more gameplays on YouTube for Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 1, 2 and 3, and also Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare. Also re-watched FIFA’s The Journey for FIFA 18 upto 19 before it was discarded for FIFA 20 to now EA Sports FC. And truth be told, it was a wise move to discard it, it was a pretty boring feature to FIFA coz all the outcomes of the gameplay were all predetermined, no challenge whatsoever🙄. A school friend suggested that we go try out Red Dead Redemption and I’m soo looking forward to that. The game has the realest graphics you’ll ever see…GTA aside. Speaking of GTA, the trailer for GTA VI is out, but I guess you already knew that coz it’s all over the web. It should find me with my own PlayStation console coz I couldn’t finish GTA V’s missions coz of playing in a public cyber. When the game comes out in 2025, I sure as hell should have my own console. Working towards that now. PS: Watching these gameplays on a TV screen makes you feel like you’re actually playing the game😅.

PSS: If you have a few seconds to spare, please hit the <reply> button and let me know what you thought of this email. I’d love to hear your thoughts on it and what could be improved. It also reminds me that there’s another person reading it on the other end of my screen😅. Thanks.

Have a wonderful week ahead!

Reagan.