Life is More Than Music

Megan: 1963~2008

Today was a wonderful time of reunion and rejoicing.  Music Camp started today- I've been going there for 9 or 10 years, and we thought that it wasn't going to be able to open again this year.  But it did, and I am happy.

When one has been doing something like this for so long, there is a bond that is formed that cannot be explained.  The people that were my teachers have become my friends.  The friends that I made I carry on into other areas of my life.  Reunion is rejoicing, and reunion is a lot of running around giving hugs.

But life is bittersweet.

My very first violin teacher at camp was an incredible woman named Megan.  When I first met her, her daughter was just born- she's ten now.  Every year in between was  talking about what the year had meant to both of us.  She was an incredible woman.  I thought the world of her.  Through our conversations, I learned that life was hard for her.  But she kept pushing through.

Last summer, she gave up on life and committed suicide.

Today, I look in her mother's eyes and I see so much pain.  I look at Michelle, who's only ten years old.  I wonder what she thinks- does she think that her mother didn't love her?  Because she did.  Megan loved so many people.  

And I think of a poem called Music I Heard.  The first verse:

Music I heard with you was more than music,
And bread I broke with you was more than bread.

Now that I am without you, all is desolate;
All that was once so beautiful is dead.

I  guess this is life.  We love, we lose.  Because we love, life is beautiful, but it is also bittersweet.  Because we love, we feel loss.  But we always remember.  Life is More than Music, and it's for that reason that More Than Music is the name of the camp.

...And in my heart they will remember always, -
They knew you once, O beautiful and wise.

The problems with death/ my special project

      As I read my title I laugh because death is a problem in itself.  It sure doesn't need anything else to go along with it :)  However, things do, and that's generally where the problems occur.

I am a good student.  Sometimes freakishly so.  I'm the only person I know to ever get 100% on a course (although it's slightly less impressive when I say that it was Grade Nine Bible.) 

    However, Geoff's death has sent me on a crash course of disaster.  And no wonder, seeing as it was just one week before school started.  For example, the fact that I'm actually close to failing Functions and Relations.  I've never been close to failing anything, mostly because I'm such a perfectionist that I don't like getting less than nineties.  It also seems that grief has somehow affected my memory in French as well, as I can't even remember how to write in present tense correctly, let alone the passe compose, and the other thousand tenses that we learned in the past few years.

    I'm not even sure what I think about doing so poorly.  I almost felt proud that I was doing so badly in math.  Now I just feel tired, because I have to come home each day and teach the stuff to myself our that math "teacher" lectured on us today.

      Anyway, I've found myself a special project to keep my mind off things.  The fact that yellow is both our favourite colour, and the fact that he asked to be buried in a yellow tux made me want to make him a present.  Grace took pumpkins up to his grave because he adored pumpkins as well, and it got me thinking.  If Geoff loved yellow so much, and if I love yellow so much, why not make his grave a glowing yellow beacon.

    So every day I'm outside with plastic bags collecting the most vibrant yellow leaves I can find.  And it's therapeutic as well, because every glowing leaf I find reminds me of him and why I miss him so much.  I talk to him too, and tell him how much I miss him because I know that he'll always be beside me.

Aftermath

Tomorrow is the visitation.

I don't know how I'm going to get through it.  All I know is that I really, really, really hope that it's not an open casket... Geoff was the most alive person I know... knew... KNOW!  I want to remember him in life, not in death.

Ending? or Beginning?

We, I suppose that my new blog is going to change.  It was suppose to record everything about the struggles of my friend as he battled cancer.  

He died this afternoon.

Shock.  It hasn't sunk in yet.  Thank goodness.  I can laugh right now, and I haven't started crying yet.  I feel like throwing up.

Two months, ha.

Today is August 24, 2008.  The day Geoffrey died.

Geoffrey Dykstra

July 8, 1993~ Aug 24 2008

It never ends...

My friend has a probable diagnosis of cancer.

They don't know for sure, but he does have a massive tumour in his shoulder, and his body has been acting weird all of a sudden.  They think it's an extremely aggressive cancer.

I don't understand this.

I haven't done much ranting at God yet, but I will, especially if it does turn out to be a huge, cancerous, aggressive tumour.  Oh great, I'm starting to cry again.  He's only fifteen!  He doesn't deserve this, actually, he's be one of the LAST people I would say that deserves it.  He is the most hilarious, sweet, scarcastic, and goofy guy ever.  He was one of my best friends in elementary school.  He made life bearable for me when I was alone in grade five.

It just goes and goes and goes... it's the Year of the Cancer.  Three people I know have died from it, and two people (or, will be two when the diagnosis is firm) have been diagnosed with an extremely aggressive kind.  My dad's best friend, a kid at my youth group's dad, and a mentor from my Orchestra have all passed away.  My next door neighbour and family friend for as long as I can remember has cancer through her whole body.  And now this...

Not to mention my Nana nearly dying in February and my friend's best friend dying from cystic fibrosis...

It's too much.

We find out tomorrow.