In Memory of Danielle Stewart
On September 28, 2006 Danielle Stewart, a student who worked vigorously with the Mass Media Video Broadcast Production Class was driving home from just working for a Thursday night JV football game. Along the way she lost control of her vehicle, overcompensating to get back in the right position, she wrecked her vehicle. That night Danielle died. That night would be the last she would breathe a breath on this Earth. Danielle was a kind girl. She was very energetic. She had a motor in her mouth. She talked constantly about something, either someone else, or herself. She was a great person to hang around.
I personally did not know Danielle as much as I wanted to know her, as much as I wish I would have known her. The side I saw of her was her professional side, not her friendly side. She was so good at what she did in Mass Media that she wanted it right, every time. When she was working with the show, everyone knew that she would complain about something or someone making a mistake on the show, and that is completely normal, for anyone. In Mass Media, if someone makes a mess-up on the show, the show has to start all the way back over from the beginning. Sometimes we could finish the show in one or two simple takes, but there were times where we had bad days and had to do it ten or twelve times, and that was stressful on all of us. I’m the same way. I can’t stand the fact that there are students that come into our class and have been there for three years and STILL don’t know how to focus a camera. When a shot is bad, I try to get the problem solved, just as Danielle does. I don’t usually deal with the Front Toaster (a graphics computer used for name graphics and other graphics), but I deal with cameras quite a bit and have gotten used to doing the intro shot for the show.
Some of the members of Mass Media have difficulty with the intro shot, which bugs me sometimes, because we’ve had some very horrible shots in our time working with the show, and then we’ve had some very good days with the cameras. There’s always a problem in the show, whether it be a piece of equipment not working or a person who just messed up a bit. Either way, Danielle was right there, every time, trying to see how she could help. There were several times where Danielle and I were on bad terms, and with other students as well. As I said earlier, I didn’t know her as well as I wish I did. It wasn’t until her death that I learned about her life. She wasn’t a bossy little person all the time, she was a sweet kind girl, she was an awesome person to hang around, but I wasted my time worrying about how much I disliked her way of communicating with fellow Mass Media Students rather than spending time being her friend. Now I’ve lost that chance, and I won’t let it happen again.
I feel so wrong not knowing Danielle as I wish I could have known her. I am a Christian, and try to be as devout as possible in my walk with Christ. Danielle’s death showed me two things I needed to do in my life. I need to get to know my friends. I need to get closer to my friends and not waste the precious time I have with them on petty ideas and concerns. I learned the hard way that my chance to help a fellow believer out in their life, or lift them up, or just be friends with someone can be taken away so quickly that it’ll blind you forever, it’ll hit you square in the face. Another thing I learned that I need to do is get right with God. I’m the one-in-a-million person who has the innate ability to change my mindset completely in the snap of a finger. In this I solve problems quicker than usual, I’m able to quickly put myself in others shoes and see how they would solve a problem (considering whether or not I know this person). The only down side to this is that there’s one mindset that does better at controlling me than I am at controlling it. It’s the mind set that lingers over me when I disobey God’s commandments, when I do something wrong and I know it, when I am tempted to do something wrong, this mindset clouds all others, despite my attempt to either block it out or replace it, it still lingers there and clouds my judgment.
This mindset has set me far away from God, and I just pray that God will use Danielle’s death to help me with this. Now I see how quickly your life can be snatched form you. It’s hard to value life when you haven’t seen it slip away from you. It’s hard to value life as important when someone you don’t know, or have never met, dies. If you don’t know the person, and have never experienced a death of a loved one before, you won’t know how to respond to it, in fact, you won’t respond to it, at all. I know, this is how I lived nineteen years of my life. Though I am a Christian and I am concerned of other people’s salvation and their walk with God, their trust in God; though I am so good at giving advice to my friends, to friends who are hurting or are just having trouble understanding something (especially my friends on the forum sites on the internet, other Christians who are struggling somewhere in their lives, or non-Christians who don’t really understand what it means to be a Christian), though I am good at helping them, I am horrible at helping myself.
When that lingering and cloudy mindset comes into my mind, it’s so difficult for me to push it aside; it’s so difficult for me to think about God and his promise and his sacrifice for me, because I hadn’t fully grasped the value of it. I still haven’t grasped it, and I don’t think any of us ever will, not until the day we die and are with our God in Heaven. There’s always something else in our lives we can learn, if we stand still, stop rushing our lives, and take time to both learn from it and enjoy every second of it. Danielle knew a lot about enjoying life, she enjoyed it to the very last minute, and I commend her for that. She did something that I haven’t been able to do in my life yet.
There have been many times where I have done something wrong, knew I was doing it while I was doing it, whatever it may be, I knew it, and I knew the consequences of it, and it took Danielle’s death for me to finally answer God shaking me awake. I haven’t sobbed yet, but I have had to wipe my eyes a lot for Danielle. Though I wasn’t close to her, she’s a reminder to me of how that could have been me there in that casket, it could have been me on that wreck scene, or in a different kind of accident, who didn’t live, who’s life was snatched away so quickly in this breeze of a life. It could have been me…and I’ve never thought twice about it…well, now I’m thinking about it a lot. God created this entire universe, every stick and stone, every pesky ant and mosquito, every living thing, and then He created us. Why? Why would God go through all that trouble to create life forms so much lower than Himself? Why then, would he love us above all others? Why then would he pay so much attention to me, each and every one of us?
Why? Because He wants to be with us. He wants us to be with Him. God created us to be with Him, that’s our sole purpose, to be with Him. That’s the reason for everything. That’s why Jesus died on the cross. Jesus gave his life, in a horrible way, a way that no human, no matter how strong and powerful, could have withstood as much or as long as Jesus did. For what reason did he do this? He did it so that we could be with our God, our creator, because God cannot commune with sin, disobedience, because he is perfect, and if he communes with disobedience then he would no longer be God, he would become imperfect and be unworthy of being our God. Not only, however, did Jesus give us a doorway to go into heaven with our father, a chance to go to heaven, giving Christ our sins, God wiping them clean, and allowing us to enter heaven pure of sin and disobedience, so that we could be with God in Heaven in eternity, but Christ gave his own life, as a testimony for us to follow, so that we can follow him and be close to God while here on the Earth.
It took Danielle’s death for me to realize this, and it’s still to fully crush in on me yet, but when it does, praise God, praise his holy name, praise God. Our friendships with both Christ and others are on the line here, every day. There’s a chance that one of our friends could die and if were not close to this friend, like I was not with Danielle, we’ll regret it. There’s a chance we could die, and if we’re not as close to God as we should have been, then when we come before God he’s going to say, “My servant, though I knew you, I barely knew you. Welcome to my kingdom, but I pity you, for you missed out on my blessings on Earth. I could have given you life, I could have given you treasures beyond measure, but you denied it, taking your own life as the treasure, instead of relying on my gifts for your life. You know that I created this universe, you know it, but you did not trust in it. You believed in it, but you did not trust it. Welcome to my kingdom, but I pity your waste of time.”
I feel so unused by God. I feel like God and I have spent too long o the same issues with my life. I feel like God has called me for better things, but I’ve wasted my time with him, in fact, I can’t say that I knew God as much as I wish I know him. That’s the same thing I said about Danielle, but before I die, starting right now, I’m going to work harder on knowing God better…no, I am going to know God better.
Eric Wright
