Sissy, what's one of your saddest memories?

One of my saddest memories involved the death of my classmate, Dylan. He died my sophomore year of high school in a car accident. He was driving down a dirt road outside of town where new gravel had recently been laid without his seat belt when he received a text message. He picked up his phone to text and crashed. There was nobody for quite a ways around because it was during lunch time in the middle of the day. It ended up that our football coach found him and his truck.

Dylan didn't die right away. He held on for a little while until he finally died and went to heaven. We were all completely devastated. I remember when I first found out, my friend Kaden told me that he had died and I was in utter shock. I just couldn't believe that someone my age had died. People my age weren't supposed to die, even if it was a freak accident like Dylan's.

I remember going to Dylan's funeral. It was open-casket and looking at Dylan's lifeless body lying there in that coffin in his football jersey and jeans, it was like you were watching him sleep on the floor of our history teacher's room on a game day. It was completely unreal. As we entered the church, he was the first thing you saw, but then throughout the room were tables set up to show who Dylan really was. I just remember learning a lot about Dylan that I didn't know. I always thought Dylan was a shallow kid at my school that was one of the popular boys that didn't really pay attention to me because I was beneath him. What I found out is that he's almost exactly like bubba. He was athletic and good at every sport imaginable.

Reading the letter to Dylan from his family on the back of the funeral program was enough to make me tear up because it was like I was reading a letter written from me to Bruster, a letter that was never to be read by the dead boy in the casket in the entrance of the church. When the service began, I was able to hold on for a little bit while we sang the opening hymn. But as soon as they brought Dylan's casket in, followed by his family, I fell apart. I remember watching his mom come into the sanctuary, practically being carried by his family members because she was completely broken. It was like nothing I had ever seen before. It was like watching a woman falling apart at the seams. I can't even describe how awful I felt when I watched her being torn apart like that. I bawled and bawled throughout the service, unable to stop my tears from flowing, even though I never knew Dylan that well.

I'll never forget you Dylan.

Dylan Soukup, 2010