This week I am attempting to discuss one of the hardest subjects to tackle: death. This topic raises questions for our spirituality, invincibility and the choices we make everyday. Thinking about death at any point in our lives is scary. We lose people we love, we see promising individuals die far too early, like Oscar-winner Heath Ledger and some of us risk death everyday by crossing Main Street outside the library. Death in any perspective will inevitably surprise us at some point. Philosopher Epicurus said, "Thus that which is the most awful of evils, death, is nothing to us, since when we exist there is no death, and when there is death we do not exist." As children, the concept of death is hard to understand. If we have memories of death or funerals from our childhood, we usually associate sad and negative emotions with it. But as adults, much more emotional baggage arrives when someone we know passes away. In the past month, two of my good friends from high school have dealt with the death of a parent. Marian, the mother of one of my best friends, practically saw me grow up at the dance studio and Mr. Gutierrez was a long-term substitute for my seventh-grade science class. I knew both of them very well and they will be missed. Both had been ill for quite some time, but I never thought they would be gone so soon. I felt incredibly guilty for not remembering the last time I saw Marian and for being too lazy to walk across the auditorium at the choir concert to see Mr. Gutierrez in December. Having two friends lose a parent really put my own life into perspective. I cannot imagine having to deal with the same loss. We no longer associate sad emotions alone with the events like we could as children. We start to focus on feeling guilty and angry at the deceased, God and, even worse, ourselves. Children don't question themselves and have doubts like adults do. Most of the deaths we face as students in college deal with individuals from the first 18 years of our lives. So when death strikes our life now, it is easy to feel selfish for what we have left behind at home. College can be labeled as a transitional time separate from our previous childhood lives and we are eager, almost too eager, to move away from some of it. The people from that part of our lives nurtured us. We are not ready to let go of them even though we sometimes tend to put them aside for our new, independent lives. So, how do we cope with the pain we may have to face at some point before we graduate? To avoid those guilty feelings, you must maintain your close relationships from home. Don't replace the first 18 years of your life with four new ones just because you are independent. Would you have passed the opportunity to stay the night at grandma and grandpa's house when you were eight years old? I know that I wouldn't have. Do your best to take advantage of every chance you have to spend another night with them, just like when you were a kid, because before you know it, the option will not be there anymore. t&c;
JAKE WIDMAN IS A SENIOR THEATRE AND PUBLIC RELATIONS MAJOR AND COLUMNIST FOR THE t&c.;
