death

It's not very rare that you hear stories of people dying. Motorcycle accidents, drowning in rivers, car accidents, drunk driving, heart attacks, freak accidents. And when you hear it on the news, it's just another person you didn't know. It's just another story to hear. Then when someone you know dies, you don't even know how to react. You hear so much about people dying but what does it mean? It's not as intimidating when you think of someone leaving this earth and going to Heaven. It can be hard for you, the friends, the family - hard to adapt to that person missing, but when you think about the fact that the person who died honestly isn't missing out on anything because they're dancing with Jesus, it doesn't seem so bad. You almost get jealous.

Anyways Mark Zacharewicz died last night. It's really weird typing that. We weren't close. I mean we "dated" for like, 3 weeks when I was 15. He bought me flowers, he was real nice too. We weren't friends after that, but I started to see him at church every now and then. He ended up being a pretty nice kid. He used to call me "Paskiewicz" and I thought he was cool because he could speak Polish and Ukrainian and that was pretty impressive. He had the most awe-inspiring ability to accept everyone as they are. I was talking to Kay and she said sometimes we don't accept people for who they are -sometimes people think of it as negative to accept people as who they are if they aren't good people, and sometimes we don't hang out with certain people because of our image. But then we reminded each other that Jesus hung out with prostitutes and tax-collectors, people who were looked down on by society. Jesus was showing love, and Mark did that a lot. He showed love to everyone, and that's inspiring.

Mark's death brings so much to my mind. Even though we weren't close and hardly ever talked, it's weird. I have his number in my phone. I have emails from him, he's on my facebook. He used to call me and invite me to play capture the flag, and I never went... but he makes me remember that we all assume we'll live until we're 80, and die from a natural death. He reminds me that death could be tomorrow, death could be in five minutes. Death could be next week - What do we need to fix before we die? Really, what do we need to fix? We think we have our whole life to make things right, but what if we knew we were going to die next week? What would we do? Not physically like sky-diving and whatever, but what kind of relationships would we fix, what kind of attitude would we have, what kind of love would we show, what would we tell people, what would we give away? We need to live like we're dying in the sense that, life could end, and it can't end on a bad note. Don't end your day angry at someone, don't forget to end your day without telling the people you love that you love them.

I wonder if I were to die tomorrow, how many blogs would be written about me? What would they say? Would my blogs say that "Sarah Paskiewicz showed love to everyone she met. She was positive and kind and always happy." or would they just say "Sarah was cool, and she made me laugh."? These are important questions. I don't' want my life to end with any unfinished business. I don't want my life to end with people thinking I could have been better. It overwhelms me when I think of how much better I wish I was, cause honestly I just wish I was more like my mom. More patient, more uplifting, more encouraging, more positive. I work towards those things but sometimes I just don't feel like I'll ever be who I want to be. But I'll never stop working. I'll never stop trying to show that love that Jesus showed, the love that Mark showed, the love that my mom shows. I'll never stop trying to accept people and to not judge - two things I've always been good at, but it seems like when you think you're "good enough at it" you begin to fall. No more pride, no more arrogance.

Hello, new me.