When Smiles Fade

MOOD | melancholic
CRAVING FOR | serenity for someone i barely know
RANDOM | death is imminent





I keep coming back to the messages that pile up by the minute in your Facebook site. I am transfixed by the outpouring of grief and memories posted by your friends and colleagues. I do not know you that well, except that you are a friend of my friend, but I am rendered motionless by this shocking event.

It's not fair. No one deserves to die at 30.

Mortality has never come this close to me before, and the reality is jarring. One look at your profile page is all it takes to see how life can sometimes play a different tune from the song we've composed in our heads. Your personal motto may have been foretelling-- "no pain, no gain"-- but no one can really be prepared for this, and I sincerely hope that there was no pain.

I take a look at the number of friends you have, and I realize that it will forever remain at 4,394. I take a look at our 8 mutual friends, and I know that there won't be another one. I take a look at your primary photo and it strikes me that your smile-- that beam that radiates with so much happiness-- will remain frozen in your pictures, lingering with the memories of a life that has been cut too early, cut too short.

That smile may fade from your body, but from your spirit it never will. That smile will certainly not fade from the hearts of your family, or from the hearts of your friends, or from ours who are reminded of our humanity by your passing. Rest in peace, that's all we can ask.

When smiles fade, that's all we can offer.