Comparing scars.

Every year June 16th creeps up on me. When I start to see all of the Father's Day commercials all over the television and the newspapers, I immediately start to feel sad. I love my dad, he is one of my most favorite people. The Father's Day sadness has nothing to do with him.

In 1996 I woke up on Father's Day (Which was June 16 that year) to my phone ringing way too early in the morning. My friend, Jamie was on the line. She was crying. In between gasps of air she informed me that JD, George and Carrie were all killed in a car wreck at about 3AM. (A car wreck that I had been dreaming about over and over again every night for alomst a month before, which made it that much worst. It was the moment my nightmare literally came true. Which also brings up about 100 other issues that refuse to open to public discussion.)
I don't think I have ever really been the same person again after that phone call. When a small group of your friends get all wiped out in the same evening when you and they are that young, you really don't have the tools to comprehend what just happened. It is bad enough when you lose one person, but to lose three young people all at the same time. It just makes you look at life differently.

I was closest to JD, so it is his loss I feel the most, still, every day, but I remember them all. I talk about them all. I keep thinking that if I talk about them as often as possible, I am somehow keeping them alive. I keep thinking if I tell people their story and stop even one person from driving drunk, their deaths meant something. They died for a reason, no matter how small that reason might seem.

I loved JD very much, he was my friend, and he believed in me at a time where I really needed someone to believe in me. He supported me and was a great friend during one of the hardest years of my life. He helped bring music into my life, he backed me up the first time I stepped foot on a stage and always made sure I could see him whenever I played shows because he knew how much I hated being on stage, and now he is dead. (My desire to perform on a stage died along with him.)

Now three people will never know what it was like to be over the age of 23, or get married, or have babies, or grow old... It is all so fucking meaningless. Getting drunk at that party was not worth what it ended up costing everyone that night. (The drivers of the two cars in the accident that killed them were both drunk. They both lived.)

I remember at JD's funeral, the funeral director was trying to console me. He told me that it may not seem like it now, but every death makes sense at some point. I'm still waiting for the day for these deaths to "make sense". I'm still looking for answers to all of the questions that phone call left me with. Every day I'm still looking for signs that he is somewhere nearby no matter how silly that may sound.

When I was riding in the passanger seat of the car this weekend staring out the window, thinking of them, feeling pretty hopeless, this car passed us. I just happened to have my camera:


That's all I have right now.