Where I was when I first heard...

Its been three years but I still remember exactly where I was and what was going through my mind when I first heard about my cousin Jayce's death. On the night that it happened in April 2006, my family and I attended an initiation ceremony for a peer leader program that I would be doing as a senior the following year. I remember the headmaster of my school giving a speech at the initiation that could have put a caffeine-induced hyperactive 6-year-old to sleep within five minutes. As he rambled through his speech, his raspy voice going in one of my ears and out the other, I just wanted to get out of the lecture hall as soon as possible because I was bored. I had no idea what was going on with my family members in Wewoka, Oklahoma. Now I know that they would have given anything to be listening to a boring speech that night, instead of spending it in the Seminole hospital. 

After the initiation, I went with my boyfriend and my two best friends to Taco Bell to eat dinner. The headmaster's hour-long speech made us hungry enough to eat our arms, and food was the only thing on everyone's mind. I had my cell phone turned on silent mode from the initiation, so I never heard my mom's dozen phone calls and the text message that caused me to almost wreck my car when I read it. As I was driving home from Taco Bell, I checked my phone and noticed all of these calls and text messages. I read the first text message from my mom. It said, "Jayce was killed in a four wheeler accident." The bluntness of those words jumped out from the phone- I had to read them twice before I could fully comprehend what my mom had told me. The reality of the fact that my little 12-year-old cousin's life was cut short did not set in for a couple of days, but I will never forget that moment when I first heard the tragic news.