Life is short

#1

Well after almost a year of fighting (not the whole time though) a friend and teammate passed away today. He was the starting shortstop for our JV baseball team last year and I was the starting 3rd baseman. He was a junior this year but never made it to school. He was a grade ahead of me and even though he wasn’t a friend outside of baseball but I had a few good times with him while he was playing with us for a couple of weeks. During the season his arm was hurting very bad so he got it checked out once and they said it was nothing. He went again and they said that they might have found something so they brought him back a day later and he had leukimia. It wasn’t too bad at that point they caught it early and they got rid of it in his arm enough so that he could get out of the hospital for the end of the summer I believe and fall I saw him around. They let him out long enough to go fishing and hang out with his friends and relatives. Then recently they found something in his spinal fluid and then things went downhill and the last few days they were keeping him alive at the hospital and I was supposed to go see him friday. He wasn’t doing good and not concious. Today during school they called down his relatives one of my good friends and I knew something was wrong and a few classes later they announced that he had passed away. I have never seen anything like it. This kid was a friend to almost everyone 9-12. We are a small school and have 7-12 in one building. Almost everyone was crying in the hall. To make things worse we had a kid who was supposed to graduate last year and was taking 1 class for half of this year. He was killed in a car accident Sunday. In 5 days we had 2 deaths in our school and we’re pretty small. A teacher that is retiring this year and has been at the school his whole life said he never saw anything as bad as today. It was one of the worst things I have ever experienced. He was a great kid and was liked by everyone and it’s a shame it had to happen to him. Please keep him and his family in your prayers. They need it.

RIP Hector

Bower

#2

Real sorry to hear about that, Bower. My thoughts go out to his family and friends.

#3

You have honored your friend and teammate with your message, Bower…and in turn have honored yourself as well.

It is an important message, delivered with honesty and restraint. Thank you. I’m sure your friend will be remembered for the rest of your lives.

Hose

#4

I lost my father to Leukemia when I was 13 and there is nothing to prepare you for that if you are a family member or a friend. What a great teammate and friend you are to keep your friendship alive by sharing with us. He won’t be forgotten if ever time you step on the field you remember him. Thanks.

#5

That’s a shame, sorry Bower. My thoughts and prayers go out to Hector’s family and friends.

#6

that’s just terrible…I had a friend pass away this year too, and it was the same way as you described it, people crying in the halls and stuff…keep him in your memory…it helps to talk with people and be with your friends. It all takes time.

Sorry to hear this.

Ben

#7

Well let me explain something in our school things are a little backward because of our size. The majority of athletes go Soccer Baksetball Baseball, so most of us do play soccer a few play football instead which was just started up here in our school the last few years. Well Hector was from mexico and came here when he was younger but everyone knew him and he was a very very good soccer player. Well my friend thought it would be a good idea to go down to the soccer field and play a little pickup game in memory of him. Well it turned out very good 20-30 kids playing. Then we get word that one of his younger brothers and 2 cousins are coming up to play! Those guys came up to play with us to just be with their friends and get away for a couple hours. We had a ton of fun and I think we did the best thing we coudl have by treating them like we normally treating them which involves a lot of laughing and wrestling and horsing around. So I’m very happy 3 of his family members could come out and do that to have a little fun and I don’t think they stopped laughing once.

Now the other kid that passed away it happens his younger brother was best friends with Hector who passed today. It’s werid to think that a kid could lose a brother and a best friend but he was also there playing along. A couple of family friends came as well and it was great they had a lot of fun and I think we really helped them out. Even acouple football players skipped their football for the day to come.

I think we all feel a lot better now.

#8

Our family prayers go out to all you guys…

#9

Bower, I very seriously know how you feel, one of our baseball players passed away this summer, it was terrible he was such a nice well liked guy. Bad things happen to good people, such is life. If you know the person a while, its going to hurt for a long time, hell I still miss the crap out of him and it was 9 months ago. But I realised soon after his death, you can take one of two things from something like this.

1-Life sucks, we could all die tommorow so why the hell should we all go on living

or

2-Life is precious, we could all die tommorow, so do everything today like you ARE going to die tommorow

Its been our driving force this season with my team, we give 100% every with every single thing we do because we know that if we give 99% on just one thing, we are dishonoring our fallen teamate who doesn’t have the chance to give 100%. We are going to win the league for him this year, there is not one single doubt in my mind.

So I’m very sorry to hear for your loss Bower, death hurts and its going to a while before things go back to normal. They will eventually, even if it seems like they never will.