Pref­ace

I've been fight­ing with Megan because she told me her and Jake were going to Grad­u­a­tion together. My prob­lem was that she hadn't invited me, and that really hurt. She told me she fig­ured that I didn't want to go, because of con­ver­sa­tions we had previously.

I ws upset by her assump­tions and we had really been hav­ing prob­lems. And I still didn't know if I was going or not.

Finally decid­ing to go, I dawned my "Sun­day Best" to go and sup­port my friends at Grad­u­a­tion. I felt incred­i­bly strange about it, but I thought it would be bet­ter for me to go.

But when I got there, every­thing changed.

Thomas Snover, a senior who was sup­posed to march this morn­ing, died last night in a motor­cy­cle accident.

The news was being slowly passed around to those on the floor by Rocky coun­selors. Brad told me about it. And even though I've never known Tom (or heard of him, either), I was sad. I wasn't so much wor­ried about how I was feel­ing any­more. My feel­ings turned to the real tragedy that had happened.

As the choirs got up on the ris­ers, ready to sing, my friend Andra said some­thing that struck me in a way I can't really describe. She said, "It's funny … I saw him yes­ter­day and thought he was kinda cute …"

The Cer­e­mony

Every­thing was basi­cally the same as it is every year, with the excep­tion of Dr. Radcliff's announce­ment about Thomas, where he asked those in atten­dance for a moment of silence.

I sat through things try­ing as hard as I could to sup­press so many emo­tions. When Rocky Moun­tain Echoes went on stage to sing "It's So Hard to Say Good­bye to Yes­ter­day," I really lost it.

Rather than expose my prob­lems to the thou­sands in atten­dance, I went out into the lob­bies that sur­round Moby Arena. While I was out there, I saw Megan stand­ing there as well. Then I went back in to the ceremony.

The next time I walked out of it (dur­ing the actual Com­mence­ment), Megan asked me to talk to her, and I told her that I wanted to go back in to the cer­e­mony. I was pos­tur­ing … but I didn't know how to han­dle things.

Post

After the whole thing was done, I did my best to get out of there as fast as humanly pos­si­ble. Megan was chas­ing me to my car, say­ing that I needed to talk to her, and that I was run­ning away from her … The only thing that I said to her was that this was the time that I needed her most, and she wasn't there for me. Then she stopped fol­low­ing me, and I went out to my car.

The rest of the day is a blur … I don't know how much more of this I can take …