OMG. RT @baltimoresun 4 people have been found dead at the Sheraton in Towson, near the mall, according to WJZ.
The article was about a family of four (mother, father and 2 daughters) that was found dead in their hotel room near Baltimore. There were no names. Just bodies. I thought that's awful. How did that happen. They're just found dead? That's so odd.
The next day I got home to a number of Facebook statuses reading RIP Parentes. I thought wait, not one person a whole family. What's going on. Then I put it together.
The family lived about 2 miles from me. They had a daughter who goes to school with my sister. There other daughter was good friends with my friend's sister. You always think of these things as a freak incident. Tragic stories of tragic people. Something that just happened to that one family. An outlier. But, when it happens to your town it's different. Like it didn't actually happen. Things like that don't happen. Not to you. Or your town. It happens to the outside world. But, in your perfect bubble of suburbia murder-suicides don't happen. Families don't just die. Neighbors don't just fall off the face of the Earth.
But, they do.
People just die. It's not always glamorous or drawn out. It's not after battling cancer. Or a gun battle. Sometimes people just die. Sometimes they're so unhappy that they figure the following life must prove easier than this one. So they leave. But, this time misery loves company so a whole family left. Gone. Their house empty. A shell of the life that used to live there. Beds won't be slept in again. Cars won't be driven again. It's empty. stark. blank.
They're gone.
So, I didn't know them. But, it's like September 11th. Not everyone lived in NYC. Or knew someone who died. Or knew someone who could've died. But, that didn't stop the entire nation from coming together. This is Garden City's 9/11. Everyone in my town knows that we are cliche. Happy. Bright. Nice. We have BBQs and Christmas parties. We go to the pool together and tee-ball games. All the kids go to school together for 8 years. The picture of perfection outside the big city. Dad on Wall Street. Mom in the kitchen. Kids outside playing with the neighbors. But, things can change. Towns can be broken. The status quo falters. And, we don't know what to do.
How do we recover when a family is gone.
We'll find out. We have to.
Rest In Peace, Parentes.
KCTW
P.S. I can't shake the fact that I stayed in the hotel they died in. Another thing you never think of. Someone dying where you've lived. It is a small, fragile world.
