This is something I never wanted to write. However, sometimes life works in mysterious ways, and our most precious friends and peers are taken away from us at a young age.
More and more in the United States younger people are dying. Lately, it’s because of drug addiction or car crashes, but other times it could be a form of disease.
I grew up in Ambridge/Aliquippa, Pa. In our community of Aliquippa, we recently lost a young man, only 19 years old, on Tuesday to cancer. His name was DiMantae Bronaugh, and he fought hard. He had beat cancer once, but he was called to fight again. That’s what DiMantae did. He fought.
I wasn’t super close with DiMantae, but I did consider him my friend. He was a beacon of light, but he was taken away from us way too soon.
The same goes for my cousin Lisa that passed away at the age of 30 in 2011. The same also goes for one of my best friends, Katie, who passed away from drug overdose, at the age of 22, in 2014.
It’s hard to cope with the death of anyone, but when it’s someone younger, it seemingly gets tougher. Older people have lived an entire life, and I’m sure they lived it to the fullest. People get old, and then they die. That’s just how the human life works.
However, the human life did not say anything about burying our young friends, neighbors, and classmates.
I speak from a lot of personal experience in losing someone close to you that was young in age. I learned through Lisa, Katie and now through DiMantae. I’m not going to sit here and say that it’s going to be OK and that it’ll get easier. Sometimes, it doesn’t. Katie’s death took me a long time to get through. To be completely honest, I still haven’t recovered. Now, put DiMantae on top of that, and there’s a lot of grief and mourning.
That’s OK though. It’s OK to grieve and mourn. It’s OK to think that life isn’t fair- because it isn’t. It’s OK to get mad at whatever God you believe in.
I don’t think there will ever be an explanation about why younger people pass away. There’s the old saying of, “Why do bad things happen to good people?” I can honestly say that every time I saw Lisa, Katie, or DiMantae they were always happy and in good spirits. They weren’t bad people; they were very good people. However, they never got a chance to fully show that.
Something that helped me cope with the death of my friends was writing. Writing letters to Katie helped me get through her passing. Honestly, just talking about the person and all the times you spent together was a healing process. I remember laughing like crazy while talking to some friends about all the memories, while they just kind of sat there, unsure of what I was talking about.
Sometimes, life just comes and takes away our most beautiful flowers before they pick the weeds. It’s not fair, but honoring the memory of the young people we lost is fair in their name.