They tell you it will be a surprise. They tell you that know one expects it to happen; you hear it every year, from people's lips, from them.
They don't tell you about the pain. They don't tell you about how it feels like you were the one inside that car, like it was you being smeared across the pavement. They don't tell you how it feels to have your innards torn up and how you lay there on the floor, the scene the most vivid picture you've ever seen... and this one you never saw. This one you can only imagine. And it's worse. It's ten times worse because you can imagine.

They don't tell you how you won't be able to see for days. How your knees don't work, how your heart forgets to beat, how your eyes forget to blink. They don't tell you how the darkness is your friend and the light is just another thing that you can't help but not see.

They don't tell you how you can't breathe. They don't tell you how your lungs fall in, how you have to fight with the air to stay alive. They tell you what it feels like to be struck in the stomach by a fist and how you loose the air from your lungs.
They don't tell you how it feels to have a million of those fists in your stomach, one after another, without pause, the iron fists; they tear you to pieces.

They tell you to look around the room. They say one out of every ten of you will get into a crash. One out of every twenty of you will die in it. Look around. The person sitting next to you, your best friend; she will be the one out of those ten. She will be the one out of those twenty. She is the percentage. She makes it real. She just doesn't know it yet. She never knew it.

You laugh at them. They tell that to everyone. But you think you feel a sense of panic. You imagine what it would feel like to loose your best friend.

Now you know what you thought was wrong.
It was so wrong.
And it's horrible.
The vivid imagine in your head.

You see her, her eyes gone- shiny with death, her hair- soaked red, smeared into the pavement, ground to dust in your head. You see her cheeks- crushed and scratched, shattered and sheared along the crumbling ground of the highway. You see her body, her hand- curled around her wrist, like she had died squeezing it, like she had died trying to hold it there, like she had died trying to protect herself. You don't see the cars, or the people, or the sirens, or the lights, or the rain, or the clouds, or the eyes as they watch you.
No, you only see her, and it's ten times worse because you can imagine.

You didn't think you would be able to go. But they made you. They told you that you had to. You don't remember waking up from your sleep, or you awareness, or your mind, but you are dressed and you are there, but you don't remember how, you just remember why. Barely. You remember barely why you are there. Them. Her. You're there to say good-bye.

To who?

Your mind is so numb with a feeling acute to hunger, but this one is worse. This one is hungering for sleep. No, you already slept. This one is hungering for sunlight. No, it's already tracing your tears. This one is hungering for peace. Yes.
That's it.
Peace.
This one is hungering for the vivid image to go away. They carry the casket to your feet. Or you walked there? You don't remember. The coffin is nailed shut.They can't shower her. She was too... she is too... They didn't tell you. But you can imagine, and it's ten times worse because you can imagine.

And now the darkness is so complete. It surrounds you like a blind man that saw the light once and then had his very sight ripped from his eyes. Torn, shredded, robbed. You can see the blind man. You know how he feels.
You are home again. You don't remember how, or why, but you are home again, and the darkness closes in. It pressed against you like a heavy embrace. It's a cold embrace, but at least it is an embrace. They embraced you too. You don't remember why. You just remember that they did. Their warm arms around you, they burned like knives, like a million knives tracing their tips on your skin. They burned like fire. They burned like the road burns. And it burns all the more now because you can see how the street must have burned her. How the street melted her hair to black, how it melter her eyes to black holes, how it melted her skin off her delicate bones, how the graveled ground turned and twisted until the ground and fire had made nothing of her.
You weren't there.
You didn't see it.
But you can imagine, and it's ten times worse because you can imagine.