Buhner Dot Com Est. 2000, which is like 1947 in Internet years.

J

When you find out someone has passed away, it's sad news. When it's a friend of yours, it hits you - regardless of how close you were with that person.

People get dealt shit hands all the time. You have no money, your body doesn't work properly, you don't look or talk or dance or run the way that you would have preferred, or is considered the "norm". There are thousands of things that could happen to you that are out of your control that could make you say "why me?"

Of course, there are ways to get around these things. You can accept it and take the hand that's dealt to you, you can refuse it and go out and make yourself better, or you can kind of fall in between the two. None of those necessarily mean a bad life - the whole sappy "if you're happy, then that's all you can ask for" philosophy has a good deal of truth to it, while is why I believe the whole "money doesn't buy happiness" thing to the underlying meaning of it. Money can realisticly buy happiness - I think if I were to win the lottery, I would be happy and remain so for a long time - but that's not to say that rich people automaticly become happy, for one reason or another.

This girl (I'll just refer to her as "J" for reference) wasn't initially dealt a bad hand. It was a hand that was good for a game J didn't want to play. A perfect example of the money/happiness thing, J's family had money, but it couldn't get J happiness, and if you ever met J and knew her situation, you'd understand why.

J didn't sit back and say "woe is me" - she tried to make her life better. She tried several things, to the point of desperation at times, only to have them come back and bite her in the ass. You use the phrase "they mean well" for fuckups who don't strive to fuck up. J wasn't a fuckup, but she always meant well - and got little in return.

When someone dies, the first thought is how you'll never see that person again. Then you realize that's selfish - mourning for the loss of someone shouldn't be because of your loss, but the loss of that person to everyone. Then, when the sadness hits of everything, you put it into perspective. If I could rewind time and completely erase that person from my knowledge - never having come in contact with that person - would I have been worse off or better off? Almost every single time, you realize that you're better off having known that person, and regardless of the time and circumstances, you appreciate the time you were able to spend with that person instead of mourning the fact that that time is over.

I hope you're in a better place, J. Save a spot at the sushi bar up there for us - and I'll eat another ball of wusabi just for the hell of it.