Faith.Hope.Love

M.K.- A Chat Mourning What is Gained By Loss by S.L.A.J.

-But read what she wrote! and no it’s not cuz she went to yale lol

-Hold on; yea; it’s beautiful;

-Word…

-It’s amazing to see how people come together once someone passes away; to see how many lives she’s touched even after she’s gone

- Yea it is, and it sucks; but how else would I know her; I could search for days and not find that; odd and terrible how death allows us an opportunity to pay attention to the lives around us; i didn’t know the rest of her life, but I hope God finds a place for her

-It’s like that song…If I Die Young by The Band Perry. Theres a verse that says: “A penny for my thoughts, oh no, I’ll sell ‘em for a dollar They’re worth so much more after I’m a goner And maybe then you’ll hear the words I’ve been singing Funny, when you’re dead how people start listening”

-Idk, leaves me hopeful…I see enough who are mislead, unfocused, unmotivated, lost and not looking for anything, stuck in a self-created rut…she makes up for that i think, i my mind…a light in a million; It’s hard to look left and right and feel like you’re not seeing anything better, but a word from a couple thousand miles away from someone who lives simply by the words she’s left certainly is not a mistake…and it helps

—She’s got a genuine view, tainted by her life experiences like everyone else’s, but it’s not made for anyone in particular..yields itself to being appreciated for nothing more than it’s cordial, earnest honesty— 

—————

It’s funny and sad how someone you didn’t know could change your life. Still more entertaining so how when their gone, you wish you had known them better. Right. Couldn’t give a damn about anyone before, or maybe JUST those closest to you. And what now.

I know her as M.K. Many, many more know her as Marina Keegan, and yet an infinitesimal amount still don’t know her at all.  A tragedy? I’m not sure, but what I do know is that if not for the tragedy that took her physical being, I would’ve never known the piece of her that keeps her alive through me today. Foolish to think I could get to know a girl after she’s already passed…but if only what she wrote didn’t convey it so well, then I would be but a fool. A couple days earlier wouldn’t have allotted me as much of her as it has now. If I had them though, would they have sufficed? Doubtful and who cares. I don’t think anyone who’s met someone so beautiful, or tasted something so good, or had something so awesome, would ever say they’ve had enough to satisfy. Even so, I can say without doubt that a couple words later I’d had enough Marina Keegan to get a sliver of what I’d missed for years in my absence from her life, and all of what she’d left for me to have in the years to come in her absence from mine. Sure I’ve listened to the song “If I Die Young”, but it’s never been my aim to wait til then to hear someone’s dying song. But how beautiful it is, what is left, but just as beautiful as what was lived. Pick out what you want. But I’d pick this: to see the best of you, like I see the best of M.K. With her I have less of choice, because only the best of her is really left for public display. But as I of you, and you of others, have a choice in what you choose to allow yourself to see and uplift in your fellow brother or sister, use it to realize the light that shines in each of us. We’re not much different in the sense that we all have something to offer, but we are indescribably different in how unique our offerings we choose to leave behind. Legacy I think they call it. Choosing what to leave versus what’s actually left. I think they have a correlation don’t you. Neglecting that our lives matter and that we are but what positively earnest decisions away allowing them to affect someone else’s life in the best way is the plight of a selfish man. Even so, M.K. I must say is the closest I’ve gotten in a while to crying for someone I didn’t know. Not because her life was terrible, or she was horribly treated, or she was another example of miswritten tragedy. It’s because through her I was reminded of the unquenchable light that shines through each of us. Through the haze of our destruction comes the clarity of the building of a growing race. That “opposite of loneliness” that is there, not the  unmatched love and sense of community that is sought for. As we live and die everyday, I think I got today if not any other, that in a seemingly misfocused, cluttered, tragic, un-gilded time…there is still hope. Hope that we do not toil alone. Hope that there is light in the darkness. Hope that the best is still yet to come. For a moment, even in her absence, I loved her as much as I love you now, for the best of her, for the best of you. For the hope your existence sustains and for the hope her life leaves.

“What we have to remember is that we can still do anything. We can change our minds. We can start over. Get a post-bac or try writing for the first time. The notion that it’s too late to do anything is comical. It’s hilarious. We’re graduating college. We’re so young. We can’t, we MUST not lose this sense of possibility because in the end, it’s all we have.”

—Marina Keegan

Posted 4 days ago