Friday, March 23, 2007

Brain Dump

First--okay, so you all didn't really want to participate in writing a story through to completion, so I'll scratch that as an ongoing project. True to my word, I've drawn a name from those who participated and the winner will receive a nice surprise from me.

DENYSE, please email me by using the contact author form on my website www.carolannerhardt.com with your snail mail address and I'll get it in the mail to you!

Second--I had an experience today that really scared me to death. I went to a funeral visitation. The deceased was a nineteen year old boy, the son of one of my coworkers. The circumstances surrounding the death were scary. It was a shootout between two cars in the early hours of the morning. This boy and his 21 year old brother were in one car--unknown as to who was in the second (at least to the media). The 21 year old was shot in the arm, not seriously. I guess he drove himself and his brother to the hospital. He was released, but his younger brother died. Today at the showing there were a lot of people wearing t-shirts with words like "we have our ear on the street" "your death will be avenged". I felt as if I was surrounded by a gang that would erupt at any moment. My poor coworker was devastated, wearing a nice suit, and tears instead of his perpetual smile. I felt so sorry for him. Anyway suddenly the best friend of the deceased ran to the casket and started asking him to wake up and get out. He tried to pull the body out of the casket. Someone tackled (yes literally tackled him) and knocked one of the planters to the floor. Finally they got him calmed down, but then he punched a hole through the wall! The funeral director then announced that any further violence and the cops would be called and the service would end. The boy ran out followed by the brother who had been shot, followed by the sister who was freaking out. I was never so glad to get out of a funeral home in my life.

It's stayed on mind so heavily ever since. I'm thinking this will one day have to appear in one of my novels.

1 comment:

Emma Sanders said...

Yikes, that is a scary moment. How sad. Was it a gang, do they know? What would have caused this?

My heart breaks for the parents. The most heart wrenching funeral I attended was a friend who had killed himself. The mother broke down when they carried the casket and started just chasing after it.

I'm sorry for your loss...