“Live Your Life” We are never promised the honor to live the next day; we are never guaranteed tomorrow. You can not live regretting your decisions. You must live in the moment or the moment is wasted. The one you love more than words could describe could be gone tomorrow; the reason they are gone could get locked up. Lose focus and look away, what you turned to see can be the last thing you saw before you life flashes before your eyes. Your next breath you take in could be your last. We all realize these things at our own pace; we all have experiences that open our eyes to reality; mine were all crammed into one dramatic week. Everything happens for a reason, but I think it’s important to seek out that reason – that’s how we learn” as said by Drew Barrymore. Christopher did not get along with my ex and dear friend, Alexander. They always argued about practically everything you could think of; among their list of disagreements the most common debates were about me, how Alexander treated me, and his disrespect toward women. The arguments almost always led to brutal fist fights; this time it went too far. I was driving down highway 20 after picking up my friend, Jillian, in Upperlake when i received the horribly shocking news.
Christopher’s girlfriend, Savannah-Kay, called me to break the news to me. She had not called me in a while; I ignored the first two calls but when I saw she was calling me a third time, which she never calls more than twice unless she absolutely needs to talk to you, I knew it had to be something urgent. I reached to answer the call and with a worried voice said, “What’s wrong? What happened? Please don’t tell me it’s Christopher! ” She sighed than said, “It is. Are you sitting down? I think you should be sitting down for this. ” “Im driving. What is it? Tell me! ” “Christopher and Alexander got into fight again. ” Oh, you had me really scared don’t do that. ” “Laura! They won’t being fighting anymore though; Alexander ended it. ” “Okay, your scaring me again. Just tell me what happened. ” “Alexander shot him three times. Christopher didn’t make it; he is gone laura. ” Shock and depression filled my heart; someone had taken my heart from the cloud nine and dropped it to the burning hands of the devil; the phone dropped from my hands. Tears filled my eyes, the way waterfalls fill the spring, and I looked away and dropped my head and let go the wheel to catch my teary eyed face. My friend looked over and yelled “Laura! ” “What? Once I looked up to see my car headed straight for the guardrail, I grabbed the wheel and swerved away to avoid hitting the guardrail. The highway was a two lane highway with head-on traffic; I had swerved into the other lane of head-on traffic. I immediately swerved back into my lane; that’s when i began to loose control of my top-heavy car. The front end hit the cement that held the guard rail and sent us spinning out of control back into the other lane, putting us right in line with head-on traffic. I turned the wheel to get us out of the spiraling drift; we headed straight off the edge of the highway and over the embankment.
The top-heavy car went on two wheels and I felt the car about to begin rolling but to save us from rolling I turned the wheels to jerk us back. Suddenly, we whipped around and started heading straight down the hill for a tree and a long barb wire fence. Feeling as if I could pull the car to a screeching halt by slamming my foot through the floor to the dirt ground beneath, I pushed the break pedal to the floor. Somehow I managed to stop the car right in the narrow place between the hole in the fence and right before the tree. Looked at Jillian and said, “Are you okay? ” “Yeah. she responded reaching for the handle trying to push the door open. Throwing my wallet at her and reaching for my phone, I said, “Call AAA. My card in behind my license. ” “Laura, you call them its your car. ” “Jillian, please I would but I need to take this call. Have you ever had your heart ripped from the very veins that pump the blood that keeps you alive? Have you ever felt like your world just come crashing down on your head and there is no hope of picking up the pieces? Well, that just happened to me. Please, just call them for me. ” Jillian at a loss for words began to ial the number. I called Savannah-Kay back, with each ring i felt my heart drop further and stomach creep further up my throat. When she answered I couldn’t manage to utter a single word. She couldn’t fathom how i felt and began to tell me the story because she knew that was why I had called back. Alexander was drunk and showed up at the house. They knew he was to drunk to be driving, even walking for that matter, and took him inside. He began to ramble about how he had screwed up to the the point of no redemption and wanted Christopher’s help proving himself worthy and earning my trust back.
Christopher refused and began to tell him how was was a “worth-less piece a shit a dog wouldn’t even turn his nose to. ” Out of sheer drunk stupidity Alexander began to antagonize him and escalate the argument. Christopher with his short tempered mind didn’t let the words go much further and took a swing at the stumbling drunk. The fight became more brutal than previous fights: bodies were thrown threw windows, heads were slammed into cement, and finally Alexander pulled the . 22 pistol from his back belt loop. He shot Christopher under the jaw and right threw the heart.
On the night of his death, I woke up at 5:32 a. m. with a sharp pain in my heart and tears in my eyes; I did not understand why until the next day. At 6:22 a. m. , Christopher was pronounced dead on the scene. The one guy, Christopher, I trusted with my life lost his life to a silver bullet of a . 22 pistol. Since my father was an abusive drunk, I had no father to trust, to love, to rely on, to run to, to sit on, to lead me a shoulder to cry on, to comfort me, or to protect me. This man showed me that compassion; he was the brother, the father, the best friend. I always questioned what I would do without him.
