The Toughest Day of My Life
Monday Oct. 4, 2010, started out as a normal day for me. My alarm went off, and as usual, I hit the snooze 5 times. After finally rolling out of bed, I made myself an outfit, and took a shower. After my shower, I grabbed my backpack and a Carnation Breakfast, and headed to class. I walked to class that day, which was not a normal thing for me. But for some reason, I thought that walking would be a good idea.
After class was done, which was about 2:30 P.M., I asked my friend Owen what he was doing that night. Without any hesitation, he said that he was going to go workout then he planned to drive home. I told him to give me a call when he wanted to lift. As usual he responded with “Hell Yeah!” So I proceeded to walk out of the classroom, and headed home.
When I arrived at my apartment, I realized that all of my roommates were sitting in the living room, doing homework. So I instinctively pulled out my laptop and joined them. While working on my personal narrative assignment for my Written Communications class, my roommates began to talk. Considering that I was almost done with my narrative, I began to listen. Eventually the conversation turned into an argument about something so small that I didn’t feel the need to express my opinion to my roommates. So instead I decided to give myself time to think more about my narrative, and go take a nap. It was 4:00 P.M. when I headed to my room to sleep.
I slept for 3 hours, which is a pretty normal nap for me. After my nap, I felt refreshed, and ready to finish my narrative. When I moved to my living room, I thought to myself that Owen was supposed to call me to go work out. Shortly after thinking about that, I began to think about all the good times we used to have, and how I wished that we were as close as we used to be. Owen used to spend days, upon days at my house last year. But over the summer, we didn’t keep in touch. But I, knowing how busy Owen always was, waited for him to get in touch with me. This probably wasn’t the best choice, on my part.
I worked on my narrative for about 3 hours. This seems like an extremely long time for the little bit of work that I had left to do, but having 5 roommates means many distractions. After finishing my paper, I decided to watch a movie. We decided to watch Tommy Boy, which is one of my favorite movies. We finally started the movie at 11:30 P.M. We watched the first half as usual, meaning; plenty of laughing, and making fun of the movie. But at exactly 12:19 A.M., I received a text message that would change everything.
The text message came from Krista Himley saying, “Did you hear what happened to Owen?” Since I hadn’t heard from Owen all night, I replied, “No? What Happened?” Shortly thereafter Krista texted back saying, “He died in a car accident tonight.” After reading the text message in disbelief I glanced at my computer, only to see all of the comments on Owens Facebook Wall. My heart sunk after I read some of the comments that were posted. I didn’t know what to do. I told my roommates, even though only a couple of them had met Owen. Naturally they were upset, and they were there for me if I needed it. At about 2:00 A.M., I received a phone call from Kaila Karlen asking what had happened to Owen. I told her as much as I had known, which wasn’t very much. That night was very long for me, because not only did I not have a clue about what to do about the situation, but I kept getting text messages asking what had happened.
The next morning finally came around, while I debated going to school, I thought about all the people in my classes that I shared with Owen. So I put some clothes on, and headed to class. When I arrived to class, I saw that everyone was crying, so obviously they had all heard about it. I sat down in my desk, shortly after my instructor Mike Poellinger, asked me what had happened to him and when I found out. I told him that I didn’t really know what happened, but I had found out at 12:00, the night prior.
By this time the tears had been falling from my face for quite some time. Then we had a school counselor come in to talk to us. For me, this was the hardest part. When it was finally my turn to talk, I talked about how I would miss his smile, and the energy that he brought into every room he walked into. Actually talking about it, made it “real” for me. Listening to all the things that the others in the class had to say about him made it very tough to believe that something like this could happen to a nice kid like Owen. I guess the saying is true that “only the good die young”.
Even though this was, and is a very tough time in my life. I try to look at it in the most positive way that’s possible. I remember all the good times we had together, and the life lessons that this has taught me. I dislike how it takes a situation like this, to realize how much somebody means to you. Owen meant/means a lot to me. And not a day goes by where I’m not reminded of him. I appreciate my friendship with others more than ever. I hope that my friends appreciate my friendship as much as I appreciate theirs.
R.I.P- Owen Fitzgerald. You’ll be missed and loved by many!
