the fog

this isn't finished yet, but it will be soon.

 

It’s hard to hate Kathleen Matthews. She’s smart, pretty, popular, and a pretty important factor to my school’s swim team. Kathleen is not a b***h, or at least she doesn’t seem like one. In fact, if I’m my observations about her are right, then she’s really one of the nicest people that I know. She dated a senior last year and went to prom during both her freshman and sophomore year. I guess you could say that Kathleen is almost perfect in the high school world, and somehow she doesn’t invoke jealousy in others. Maybe you laugh or shake your head in disbelief when you hear about the time that she was trashed and fell asleep in her own vomit, or that other time the was trashed and a number of her friends had to carry her around her house, or about any other time when she was trashed, but you don’t think mean things about her. You see, it isn’t possible to hate Kathleen without feeling some remorse. It just isn’t right to hate a girl who lost her father.

There are only certain details that I remember about the day that Kathleen’s dad died. I remember that it was a Tuesday, in March, and that I had actually had a pretty nice day. I think the weather was nice. I didn’t have any AP English homework that night, which basically rocked my world. The last time that I saw Kathleen was in chorus class, and I actually think that it was about an hour before word of Mr. Matthew’s death reached the school. I remember hearing Coach Pierce’s voice over the intercom, telling all 10^th-graders and 8^th-graders to meet in our auditorium, which I though was pretty weird. I remember walking through Mercy Hall, probably making my way to the parking lot, and seeing Annie Blanks wailing hysterically, surrounded by a crowd of preppy girls. I remember seeing Elena Henson, too, and thinking that her d********g boyfriend had dumped her. Unfortunately, he had not, and they are still together today, a year and a half strong. I remember looking for Coco’s car and finding my sister, who told me that Mr. Matthews had died, and I remember feeling my heart sink because Kathleen Matthews did not deserve losing her father during the worst year of high school and I recalled an earlier thought that nothing bad would ever happen to her. Kathleen was not the kind of person who would lose her father, she just wasn’t. And my schoolmates were either in shock or hysteria. I remember the ride home. Lea wouldn’t shut up about it. Coco and I didn’t want to talk about it, and had to tell Lea to stop talking because she was driving us crazy. I remember that my sister told my mom and my dad, people who didn’t really have any business knowing about it, and I remember having my mother drill me with stupid questions.

“How did he die?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you know her?”

“Yeah, and a lot better than Lea does.” I honestly think that my sister knew nothing of Kathleen until her father died. Then her fascination grew. I don’t remember who told me about the car wreck, but I remember that it was on a different day that I heard about it, maybe Wednesday. Tinsley Matthews was driving back from Atlanta. I think it was a meeting, maybe a conference. He stopped at a traffic light in McDonough. The old lady behind him did not, and the impact of the collision drove Mr. Matthews into a trailer. But he didn’t die until after a helicopter picked him up to airlift him to the nearest hospital. It was in the helicopter that he had a heart attack. Within an hour of the wreck, Kathleen and her brother Thomas were pulled from class to hear the news, and then Coach Pierce called for the assembly. That mystery was solved, but I was still befuddled: Kathleen, Thomas, and their mother did not deserve Tinsley Matthews’ death whatsoever. I still can’t figure it out, and I’ve troubled myself a great deal over it.

I didn’t go to the funeral. I couldn’t go. I would have been flooded in confusion and despair once again, and I didn’t want to deal with it. I’d dealt with too much already, and I was too angry to go to a funeral. I was angry at my classmates and teachers who insisted that praying would alleviate the situation. Right. No amount of praying would make up for such a grave injustice, so I didn’t even bother listening to them. So I faced Mr. Matthews’ death Sarra Sedghi style: I poured all of my anger into a poem, which told my side of the story and like Mr. Matthews’ death, lacked any sort of a resolution. I still didn’t see an answer. Kathleen was so nice! Her family consisted of good people! Why would any family as nice as Kathleen’s family have a reason to deserve something so terrible? The Lord works in mysterious ways? The Lord works in mysterious ways my a*s! Things weren’t supposed to work this way!

The fog that crowded my community has lifted since March, but I still can’t help but find my way back into it. When I see Kathleen I think about her dad. When I hear about something that Kathleen did, I think about what happened to her. Even as I type these words, I stumble upon a new confusion, a new concept that I can’t grasp. The death of Tinsley Matthews will never make sense to me, and I refuse to lean upon a crutch like almost everybody else I know has. The others can put the situation in the back of their minds, and move on to different things. The others can ignore the blasphemy of that stupid statement “everything happens for a reason” that exists in what happened to the Matthews family. The others can pretend that Mr. Matthews’ death never happened. I never will.

 

Reviews

[Drew Wade]

You're a very good writer. The subject matter of this story is interesting, because I just can't grasp what's going on. When I was in high school, my friend's dad died, but that was the first year my friend was in our school, and we didn't know him that well. We were kind of mean to him and didn't care so much that his dad died. Now that I look back on it, I think that we were awful rats. But since that was really my only experience dealing with that, and I dealt with it differently, I have trouble grasping it from another angle.

I'm glad you're sensitive to this stuff. You speak eloquently about something that's tough to speak about.

Okay, now on to the review. There were only a few tiny errors. Other than that, it was awesome.

"and a pretty important factor to my school's swim team." maybe "a pretty important factor on my school's swim team."

"Yeah, and a lot better than Lea does." I think this should be its own paragraph, and the continuation following it should be put into a separate paragraph.

"I would have been flooded in confusion and despair once again" maybe "I would have been flooded with confusion and despair once again."

That was all I found. Thanks for letting me read this.