After reading a sad story from Michelin’s blog, it stirred up a long forgotten memory my consciousness had buried somewhere deep in my head — the passing of Filip. He died in a freak accident caused by a car crash visiting his family in Belgium.
I dug up an old journal I used to keep in college (only for a very short while) and found the entry on Filip. It dated January 6th, 1996 (sunny), the day when we held Filip’s memorial service. Even now, almost 10 years after Filip’s death, my heart is still heavy thinking about him. Amazingly I still have a picture of Filip from the memorial service as well as drafts of eulogies from Andrea (Filip’s girlfriend at the time) and Billy (Filip’s best friend). The entire entry was about how unwilling I was to accept his death and that I wasn’t ready to let go of his physical existence as a friend.
But I guess human brain does have a damn good way of dealing with traumatic experiences. Much of what I wrote in the journal regarding Filip’s death I can’t recall anymore. I wrote about what I did the day before the service and how I felt I still hadn’t done enough. The only thing I can vaguely recall is the sense of loss and sorrow I experienced. But no details. How silly is that? Ironically, in the same entry, I wrote that though I was saddened with the loss of Filip, I knew this wasn’t going to be the last funeral I attended.
Only months after Filip’s passing, another acquaintance at SCAD also passed away. He was driving back from Texas after a school break when his body was found in his car which had crashed into a tree on the side of the highway.
Years later after I had started working in New York City, I heard the most surreal news over my cell phone through a friend who was sharing an apartment with me at the time. A mutual friend of ours from college had been murdered. We flew back to Savannah for the memorial service a few days later.
Sometimes I couldn’t help but sigh at the infinite potentials these people would have had had they lived to enjoy them. Having attended three funerals of my peers in the short ten years I have lived in the United States has been overwhelming. But memories of their passing seem so laborious to recollect. The little that I could salvage will probably make the consciousness shove them even further down the subconsciousness where those memories will probably never see the light of the day again.
As I write about Filip and the other friends, perhaps I am also finally letting them go emotionally. Filip’s memories live on as his family set up a scholarship fund in his name at SCAD.
I inherited a nice Sony DVDRW drive (specifically Sony RW DW-U18A) from Kyung when he went back to NYC. Unfortunately Apple has issues with “unauthorized” third party dvd burners working with its apps (iTunes, iDVD… etc) in Panther (OSX 10.3). I couldn’t burn my iTunes playlist or home made DVD movies with it, rending the drive essentially useless with those apps. Fortunately 
