A Boy Taken Too Soon

This isn’t about the shootings in Chardon.
This is about a boy who had his life to live, a love to see through, and a personality that brightened the whole world.
I was sitting in class last Thursday when I was on Facebook and saw a friend of mine post something. In it, it said “happy birthday to Jeremy Tighe the biggest goofball and sweetheart ever <3 always in our hearts, RIP bud.” After I saw Kara’s post I had to look it up. I went to Bing and started typing in his name… When the search engine finished his name for me, I knew that whatever results came up would not be something good. I then continued to read about the fire engine that had gone off road and overturned, hitting a utility pole. Jeremy had died instantly the day before his 19th birthday. I hadn’t talked to him since maybe freshman year, but by that time he had already moved to Indiana and even if we did talk it was sporadic, probably just catching up for a few minutes on chat or something. However, when I read about it, I didn’t know ho to react. I was in class; I couldn’t leave or openly just start crying. From what I remember about Jeremy, all the girls in our class had loved him, he was always laughing, and he was an overall good person. For the last few years, the one memory that always stuck out is when we were in Reading one day in seventh grade and he had just said something that Mr. Gulas didn’t agree with and he threw a book or an eraser towards Jeremy… At the time I was sitting behind him and I almost fell victim to whatever object was thrown, I’m sure this happened all the time and the object changed variously, good thing Mr. Gulas did not have very good aim when he was angry with Jeremy and it almost always went towards the door. And the few days right after his death, a few of us were posting pictures or memories and people who probably haven’t talked since before graduation were remembering things about him together. In a way, it brought us together, even if it was just a brief moment. I may not have known him the past few years, but after reading almost every article that has been put online, I feel like I’ve “caught up” with him in a way. He was an amazing person and he had the potential to do great things with his life. All I’ve read on Facebook is “only the good die young.” I never really believed it until now. While I’ve never been one to follow my faith or any religion, I’m more so at a stand still once again in my life. I feel that with what happened to Jeremy and because God was such an important part of his life, that I feel drawn to explore and regain at least my faith, because I’ve never known what I believe in. But I also feel like I don’t want to go back to any of it. Jeremy was meant to do great things in his life, even if I only knew the 13-year-old Jeremy I knew that because he could make anyone laugh he was meant to be important, so why would God take someone so important away. I just watched his girlfriend, Krissy, talk about him from the services that were done this past weekend. The way she talks about him you can tell they were meant to be together forever and they were the loves of each others lives. I know many people don’t believe that if we’re as young as we are we can find our other halves, but you can see it in their pictures (because I was friends with him on Facebook) and the way she talks about him. My heart goes out to her and the rest of their families. Things like this always make me think about how short life really is. You only have this one life and anything can happen. School shootings, car accidents, even tripping down the stairs can take everything away from you. I’ve appreciated life for the last few years because one of the kids I had gone to elementary school had died when we were 16 years old. And while things and people change every minute, day, year, whatever, they’re still people that you knew at one time and they changed your life as well. I may have only known Jeremy for a short time, but I still saw things about him on Facebook and we followed each other on Twitter. I still feel that everything about his death affects me and everyone else who had known him back when were in middle school. This especially reminds us that life is short and we don’t have any time to worry about the little things… Enjoy your lives while you can because tomorrow you might not be here. This is to remember Jeremy, a boy who had a life to live with the love of his life while doing things that he loved. But I’m just Jackie, and you can always remember that no matter how smart I seem to sound here, I don’t know crap.