I Miss You, Sam.

I happened to check what day it was on my computer.

January 9, marking two years since Sam committed suicide.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PKDOZiNQE-c

That's the tribute video I made. Sometimes I watch to have a good cry. Read on and you'll know the significance of the song I put to the pictures.

I remember going to school the next day and everyone was talking about it and I kept myself from crying. Crying makes your makeup drip and your nose red. Crying means people view you differently. Crying means you're depressed and get pumped full of pills and needles. I almost cried when they came over the intercom that morning and had a moment of silence. They almost mispronounced her last name-that would have sent me over the edge.

I know some of her reasons which I promised I would not divulge, but I know she cut. Dorian asked her once in a class they had why she had a cut on her leg and she informed him that she did it herself. And I look at all the scars on my arms and legs and think if she knew I'd been cutting and burning since I was twelve, maybe she would have felt less-I don't know-alienated? I know she was on antidepressants and likely getting therapy, which I have had since the ripe age of twelve. Maybe we could have complained how much therapists suck.

The last time I saw her was Sunday in church. We were joking about Monty Python. And some scary movie had just come out and our class was talking about that and other scary stories and she talked about a story she'd heard where someone committed suicide in a house and it became haunted or something. I didn't think anything of it. I don't know if she thought anything of it. Campfire [or sunday school] stories to scare each other.

And then Tuesday came. I was watching Hellboy while assembling a puzzle of The Beatles on the floor. My mom had left to go to cub scouts or something but came back a few minutes later and got us all in the living room, turned the telly off, and braced us. Our grandmother was in bad health, so I asked if it was Nanny and she said it wasn't. That would have been right in the way things work-an old person with terminal cancer, not someone who'd just turned 16.

And all week, I wouldn't cry at school. If someone was natually gossiping about the events but had the rumors wrong, I'd straighten them out. I'd come home from school and cry until I was too cried out to cry at her funeral on Saturday. I remember Elise and I in our weight-training class just sitting on the fake green patio grass stuff, occasionally mumbling a question about how it went down, what was going to happen.

I didn't know that there were grief counselors there, that a room in the school had been set aside and if you wanted to you could leave class and go there. If I had known, I would have done it.

"If I had known." I think a lot of people were saying that.

The song I was listening to when she did it was an acousic version of a song by a Dutch band called Within Temptation. The song's called "Our Farewell." I was just listening to it on youtube as I checked my email and stuff. It would have been around the time she did it. I shared the lyrics in seminary when our teachers sat our classes down and talked about the situation.

"In my hands
A legacy of memories
I can hear you say my name
I can almost see your smile
Feel the warmth of your embrace
But there is nothing but silence now
Around the one I loved
Is this our farewell?
Sweet darling you worry too much, my child
See the sadness in your eyes
You are not alone in life
Although you might think that you are
Never thought
This day would come so soon
We had no time to say goodbye
How can the world just carry on?
I feel so lost when you are not by my side
But there's nothing but silence now
Around the one I loved
Is this our farewell?
So sorry your world is tumbling down
I will watch you through these nights
Rest your head and go to sleep
Because my child, this not our farewell.
This is not our farewell."