Trigger

fifteen • lives

I've never been to a funeral before. In fact, before Levi, I never really had someone close to me pass away either- besides my hamster, that is. My grandparents on both my mom and dad's side are alive and healthy, along with my aunts, uncles and cousins. Our family isn't even that small; but it's all healthy, thank God.

So, saying that, I'm completely unprepared for the harshness of a funeral. Someone might not associate a funeral with harshness- after all, a funeral is quiet, respectful and a chance to say your final goodbye to a loved one. The only way I can see funeral is harsh, though. A slap in the face.

Levi's funeral is harsh because I hear all these words about how good of a person Levi was from people I don't know, tears being shed from faces I've never seen and memories shared that I've never heard about, and suddenly I'm reminded. I'm reminded that before me, before this summer, Levi had a life. A life that I wasn't in, a life where other people helped with his struggles, where Finn and I weren't the only interaction he got.

And that's harsh because it just builds onto the fact that I knew Levi a lot less than I thought I did.

It also painfully reminds me that in the seventeen years Levi lived, he lived. He made friends (though he claimed he didn't, there was actually quite a turnout for the funeral), he made memories, he laughed, he cried, he mourned, he celebrated- Levi lived. And his own hands, his own mind and his own suffering had ended it all in one pull of a trigger.

Knowing all this is just so... harsh.

So here I sit, fingers intertwined in my lap, hours away from my cottage, surrounded by people I don't know. I listen to different people take some time to talk about Levi Collins and I absorb the memories that gets people chuckling because I'm finally learning something about the enigma that didn't let me in. Levi never told me anything about his past. I had hoped that he just needed to take some time to get used to me and he'd eventually open up to me. I didn't think that when I'd finally hear about his past, it'd be at his funeral, through people I don't know. One especially; a boy named Terrance.

Terrance, who although is holding back his tears makes it obvious through the broken appearance of his eyes that this death has really torn at him, talks about playing volleyball with Levi and how he had once spiked a volleyball straight onto the coach's head. I chuckle at that, mostly because I had seen Levi and Finn toss a volleyball back and forth quite a bit and Levi had quite the spike.

He also talks about the one time he and Levi had tried the Charlie Charlie Challenge in class and when they got caught, ended up getting the teacher to try it with him. Terrance chuckles slightly at that, looking a little lost in the past before blinking and continuing with another memory; Levi making a smoothie in Home Education and forgetting to put on the lid.

Terrance continues to name off memories, finishing his speech with talking about what a fun person Levi was to be around, how loyal, smart, charismatic he was...

And yet, I can't relate to any of it.

Because my view on Levi Collins is different. I don't have those type of memories with him. The first words to pop into my head when it comes to Levi aren't loyal, smart, or charismatic. The first things that come to mind are how good of a listener Levi was, how easy he was to talk to, how silly he could on our hikes when he threatened to spar Finn with a twig he found on the ground. I think about the way he could just sit for hours, saying nothing, and be completely content just with another person's presence. I think about the way he could- how he would want to- put away everything in his mind just so he could completely focus on the person he was with. I think about the small hesitation he sometimes had in his steps. I think about the bags under his eyes that slowly became darker and his posture became stiffer, the indents his nails had dug into his palm. The lifeless look on his face illuminated by the bonfire he hated missing. The gunshots in the night. The gun lying by his hand. The blood pooling from his head.