Death

Ok...this will be the first day of my new blogging era! First, I want to thank everyone who comes by to read my blogs. I'm sure they won't be boring. Also remember, these are my personal experiences, thoughts, etc. So these are my feelings. You may or may not agree with them, and that's fine. But I would appreciate it if you keep any negativity off of my comments. They will be deleted if I find them to be offensive or in the hater category. Now, my first blog is going to have to be about this thing called DEATH. With so many losses in the past few weeks, this is something that I have been thinking about a lot lately.I've experienced death over the years in many different ways and have felt many different ways about death. The first time I remember attending a funeral was for my Aunt Joyce. I must have been about 6 or 7 years old. I remember sitting on my uncle's lap crying my eyes out b/c I never really got a chance to know my Aunt Joyce. She lived in Cleveland and we lived in Erie. So I never really got a chance to get to know her. Looking back now on that particular experience, I didn't understand the circle of life. I felt like God had taken my Auntie too soon, and I didn't have the opportunity to really love her.I'm sure I lost other people to death in the years following that, but the next one that affected me most was my grandmother (my dad's mom). We weren't close b/c she lived so far away. But we did go and visit every summer. Now for those of you who don't know me...I'm mixed. My dad is white and my mom is black. Now my grandmother was old school...she didn't want my dad bringing his black women to her house, but she loved her half black grand daughter. Of course I didn't know my grandmother was this way until just a few years before she passed away. She never let her views or her upbringing affect the relationship that her and I had. Now one of my dad's sisters on the other hand...we won't even discuss her. Before my grandmother passed she told my other Aunt that she wanted me to have her class ring. The aunt that didn't like "blacks" took my grandmother's class ring when she passed away just so I wouldn't get it. But God is good, b/c when her wicked azz passed away...my cousin got the ring for me. So 12 1/2 years after my grandmother's passing I ended up with my grandmother's class ring that only cost her $12. The next one would be my girl, Angie. In high school I had 4 really good friends. Teema, Shawntell, Celeste, and Angie(RIP). There weren't many places that you didn't see at least 2 of us together. Man the stories I have of Angie (RIP). LOL. She got sick right around the same time as my favorite Aunt (on my dad's side) As a matter of fact, they both passed within 2 weeks of each other back in 2006. It's hard to believe sometimes that they have been gone 3 years already. I just lost one of my favorite uncles last year to cancer. He was a very important part of my childhood. And I can never talk about him without tears. With saying all of this...As I get older, and I lose people that are close to me, or people that I grew up on (Michael Jackson, RIP) I'm just thankful that they aren't suffering anymore. We never know what people are going through, but when they leave us we must understand that God sees fit that it's time for their pain and suffering to end. Yes we will mourn for some time, but we will always have those happy memories of each of these people.