"It is enough"

I'm going to tell a story or two about (or maybe better said, behind) the song I posted in my last entry. So if hearing such stories takes the mystery/goodness out of music for you, or if the song doesn't do much for you, feel free to move along.

Like the title of that entry said, it's an old song for a friend that died several years ago — though the similarly unexpected death of a friend's younger brother over Christmas has brought it back to mind in a powerful way. Anyways...

Jenny was a lifeguard, but the summer after graduating high school she drowned while swimming in a lake, because of a fit of her just-diagnosed epilepsy. She and I weren't the closest of friends, but we were in music class and "concert band" together, and our senses of humour clicked. Having fun and feeling happy while being at school was an unusual thing for me, nerdy introvert that I was. Not to get too sentimental or philosophic about it (though of course these are the thoughts you think after someone dies), but it seemed like she brought out a 'me' that was fun and funny — a 'me' that rarely saw the light of day. And I think she brought a lot of light and life to many people's lives.

One of the striking things at her funeral was the difference between how the "adults" and the "kids" in her life spoke about her. The adults seemed to have a hard time getting over the lost potential that her death represented, all the things she didn't do: she didn't get to go to university, to become a french teacher like she planned, to become a wife, a mother. Etc. Her peers, other the other hand were content to speak about what she'd done and been, and would continue to be in their hearts and memories.

Some of that, I'm sure, is that we ourselves hadn't had many of those 'adult' experiences yet. But as I thought and felt about it afterward, it seemed to run deeper than that. We didn't see her life in terms of lost potential, or things she didn't get a chance to do. Yes, it was monstrous, unimaginable, and so... so...unfair... that her life was cut short. Especially because she was so special, so well-loved, so full of light and life. But precisely because she was that way, it also was enough. To think otherwise would diminish all she gave. "It is enough" that we knew her for that all-too short time, because we had been given so much in that time.

At least, that's what I thought (and felt, much more importantly).