I was 10 when I went to my first open casket funeral; two months later my sister was dead. I have lived my whole life around grief and losing people, so I have begun to accept this as my reality. I say this because grief, once experienced, changes the way you look at life and how you go about it.
When our campus lost one of our own, Turner Reid Causey, the weight of everything felt unmistakably heavy. This wasn’t just another tragic
headline, he was one of our own. He walked the same halls as us, ate at the dining hall, and lived in the same spaces as us. He was just 19, younger than I am, and loved to hunt and fish—an all-around country boy by the looks of it.
I did not get the chance to know Turner, as he was an ag major, but that does not negate the fact that everybody who knew him is feeling a
certain heavy coat of grief right now. Their grief will not go away. It will not suddenly decide that it is done and pack up. No, this grief now lives with them. Nobody is prepared to see their loved one’s obituary on social media, nor should they have to be. Grief is strange like that—it doesn’t just settle with the ones closest to him, but with everyone here at ABAC. He was one of us.
This loss seeps into our community, our shared spaces, and even the way we move through daily life. It’s different—never easy—just different. Hearing that someone has passed is weird; one moment they’re here and the next they’re not.
In the days following Turner’s passing, the community responded in multiple ways. Students on the FIZZ app shared their class experiences
with him and staff encouraged us, as students, to utilize the ABAC counseling center for grief counseling if needed.
But grief doesn’t always follow guidance. It is not a one-way street; grief is a circular staircase.
Nobody ever really talks about what it’s like to have a friend pass that’s the same age as you. A week before I graduated high school my
childhood friend died in a single-car crash. My mind kept repeating, “what do you mean that was his whole life? I feel like mine has just started.” And in this type of haze, your mind grasps onto anything. Mine held onto the world and how it unapologetically kept moving.
It is six hours earlier in Italy. Does that mean in Italy he hadn’t died yet? But the plane ride to Italy is ten hours long. That time gap can never be overcome. That gap is grief. And everybody’s grief is different; I used to run and run from my grief because what else am I supposed to do with it? And I struggled—boy, did I struggle—until I realized: Grief lives in me now.
Grief has fundamentally changed me, and I’m not sure the person I was before is ever going to exist again. There’s a melancholy in me that never goes away. And I know now that that’s ok. Accepting this fact has given me room to breathe.
If you’re grieving too, I hope you know that it’s okay to feel changed by it. It’s okay to feel this loss. The air he breathed is still here, take a deep breath and it’s kind of like he’s with you. Yes, he’s gone, and yes, it’s going to hurt more than anything, but once you feel these feelings, you start to realize that this grief within you isn’t just pain—it’s proof. Proof that he was loved. This grief is your souvenir; you have loved well.