mortality

We Miss You Randy

~ randyaa ~ 4 Comments

I’m sure this isn’t the post anyone checking our blog is waiting for at the moment (sorry about that). However; It’s important to me, and I needed to post it.

9 Years ago Yesterday (Monday May 17th 2001) Marion NY lost one of its most beloved young men: Randy Miller. I’ll be honest, I wasn’t that close with him in the later years of our shared educational experience, but we were both perfectly friendly with each other. We simply shared different groups of friends. I do remember during the last few years of high school we would share a ritual almost every morning, and when I think of it now it still makes me smile.

“Morning Randy”
*nod*
“Morning Randy”
*nod*

When he first passed, it hit the whole town hard. I’ve never seen so many people show up in support of the loss of a loved one. The largest church in Marion was standing room only and overflowed into the stairwell and parking lot. Everyone felt it because it was so shockingly sudden and happened in such a horrific & terrifying way while during such a noble act.

The toughest fact to swallow is that Randy drowned while trying to save his friends who weren’t as strong of swimmers. Honestly, I can’t think about that without tearing up a little bit. I can’t think of anyone else I know that would put themselves last in such a way.

While Randy died young, he certainly didn’t leave this world without a lasting imprint. Until his mother recently started posting on Facebook I had totally forgotten he was so into poetry. He’s been published by the International Library of Poetry twice! I also remember him getting some of them in the local Marion/School publications. For being so young, he certainly had a deep outlook on life. This is one of my favorite poems which I stole from his Facebook page:

A Path

a crooked man walks a straight path,
a path of hopes and dreams.
he walks ahead without thinking twice or so it seems.
as he walks the path he proceeds to
his final destination without once falling through.
yet as he completes his journey, this voyage of his,
he knows the importance was not the things he didn’t do,
but the things he did.

-Randy Miller

I don’t know why but I get much more sensitive about the whole thing now than I did back then. Back when it happened, it just felt like a terrible thing that happened to someone I knew. For some reason now it hits me hard this time of year and this year harder than it has in the past. Maybe that’s just me imposing my own mortality on the past because of our little one on the way? I don’t know.

I hope some day I’ll be half the man Randy Miller was at the age of 19.

Jeffrey Mullin

~ randyaa ~ 3 Comments

My niece’s brother, Jeffrey Mullin, was recently shot and killed in Rochester NY. It’s always extremely sad when someone so young passes away but when it’s from such a violent act it hits twice as deep. Unfortunately Rochester is one of the most violent cities in America and we live and work right smack dab in the middle of it. People here often dismiss the murders in Rochester to the gangs and somehow believe it doesn’t happen to good citizens. Try telling that to Cassandra, my niece. Somehow I think you will come away with a different opinion.

It’s time to wake up Rochester. We need more police presence and we need better schools. According to the 2006 census there’s roughly 200,000 people living in the city of Rochester. There were 54 Murders here in 2005 and 50 so far in 2007. That’s roughly 1 in every 3700 people. Put another way, thats almost 27 people for every 100,000. That’s almost four times the national average (which is only 7)!

The Democrat and Chronicle has a piece entitled Not Forgotten where they list each of this year’s murders and have short slide shows dedicated to them. I think this is important. I think people forget that these murders are more than just statistics and that every one of the people lost was important to someone.

I copied Jeff’s slide show for my niece and I thought I’d share it with everyone, so they could learn a little bit about Jeff instead of hearing about number 50.

I’ve also uploaded the original in case anyone wanted a copy to share.