Mood:  sad

Growing up is not all that it is cracked up to be by any means. Looking back to the years of my youth, I couldn’t wait to grow up and be an adult. I can remember being in elementary school and figuring out that I would be 28 when the year 2000 came and it seemed so far away. Plans were made for what kind of wedding I was going to have, how many children I would have, what their names would be, all that jazz! Little girls do that, daydream about all the things they think are adult and special – grown up.

It wasn’t a happy event when I realized I was growing up. It was death. The first friend of mine to die was Mia Vandenheuvel. She wasn’t a super close friend like Emily, but I did consider her a friend. We had classes together in high school. We’d partied together. She and Chrissy celebrated my 15^th birthday with me. She was a good person, a sweet girl, and her death was sudden, and made a tremendous impact on me.

We’d been out of school all of six months. I had come home from England to the total mess that was my mother’s life at the time and was between semesters waiting for the time to move into the dorms at CSUN, and waiting for Jack who was still in the army and stationed in Germany. I remember exactly the moment I learned of Mia’s death. The phone rang. I ran to get it in my mother’s bedroom on her Princess phone. It was Emily. She told me that Mia had died in a car accident; Erika and Brian had survived thank goodness, but from all accounts, Mia died while she was asleep in the back of Brian’s VW van and never knew what hit her.

I cried for two whole days. I was in shock. Mia couldn’t be dead! How could such an alive and youthful young woman be gone? I went to the funeral and sat near Nigel, and held Robin’s hand. She was nearly hysterical – she had known Mia all her life. I sat there in the mortuary chapel just stunned and unable to think what to say to her parents. I could hardly speak myself I was crying and sniffling, filling tissue after tissue.

What does someone say to parents who have lost their only child? How do parents deal with such as loss? These were questions I was not equipped to handle at this moment in time. I couldn’t focus on anything but the overwhelming sense that a tremendous inequity had occurred. No matter what I did or said, nothing would change. No amount of condolences or soothing words would ever fix this situation. This wasn’t a boo boo this was a life that had been snuffed out, and an emptiness Mia’s parents would deal with the rest of their lives.

Her casket was purple, Mia’s favorite color, and her portrait was there, and she looked as beautiful as always. It hit me; I’d never see Mia again. Class reunions would come and go and she’d never be there. I’d have all my plans for my wedding, and my children. What about Mia’s plans? She’d never get married and have children, or go to college, or – anything. Her time was over, at a time when he adult life had just begun.

This was the moment I truly realized I was growing up. I realized that plans like I had made were really pointless because your life could change in a moment totally beyond your control. Being grown up was having to deal with these sudden changes, no matter how painful or life changing. I’ve been an adult since January 1991, when I truly lost my innocence attending the funeral of my friend who didn’t deserve to die.