Something Like Pity
Epilogue: The Funeral
.nachzes black-rider

There’d been an Alberta-wide Amber Alert on Kevin since he’d disappeared the night of the party. And he’d been in Calgary all along.

He’d died on December 26th, 2006, one day after he’d turned sixteen. The cops said that he’d been in the car with some guy who had just robbed a drugstore, and when the police gave chase and the car drove off the road, Kevin had died of a haemorrhage in his brain. It had been his side of the car that had crashed into the light post, and it was ironic that he had died, because it was the other one in the car who hadn’t been wearing his seatbelt. He lived, though. The police said they’d found signs of drug abuse—probably meth, they’d said—on Kevin, but there weren’t any drugs in his system—they said he’d probably been trying to quit.

The funeral was on January 2nd. I went in black jeans with a belt, and a white long-sleeved T-shirt; my family couldn’t have afforded anything more fancy, but I still felt guilty.

Kevin had been my best friend, and I still couldn’t help but think that it was me who had driven him to a life of sin. If I hadn’t pushed him away…if I had helped him to get counselling…then this never would have happened.

I spoke my blessing in Spanish as I placed my hand on the closed lid of my best friend’s coffin.

“Que Dios te perdone.”

May God forgive your sins, Kevin, I thought. Live long in Heaven.

THE END

Author’s Notes: I don’t like to disclaim things in my writing; I don’t like having to explain why I wrote what I did to people. But I feel that, in this case, this story needs it.

I’ve been wanting to write a story like this for a long time—something with a tragic ending; something where nothing at all gets resolved; something where the very morals of society are upheavaled. This was that story.

I’m not Christian. I believe that no kind of love is sinful, but I know that some people do. I wrote this story to address that belief without combating it outright; if someone reads this story and gets the idea that Kevin was punished by God for what he was doing, I’d tell them to look again.

As a final note, remember this: METH KILLS. The temptation of wanting to try it is there; even I sometimes think What would it be like?, but the truth is that the high isn’t worth the low. This story is tragic, and your life doesn’t have to be. Fight it with all you’ve got, and when you feel like giving up, remember that there are people out there who are willing to fight alongside you, like the CDA (Council on Drug Abuse), and many others. Don’t give up hope; we’ll beat this real-life demon yet!