As the summer droned on and on I sat waiting on and on until the magical day in which I would finally know and for that matter realize how band was for me, a freshman. I also was a little excited, because we got a new band director, because the other high school one had died earlier that year. I remember that day....
"Girls and Boys, our 8th grade band director, Mr. VanWormer began, something terrible has happened. I suppose many of you know Mr. Haddad the band director at Start High School. Your older brothers or sisters might have had them when they were at Start. Anyways, he died from liver disease today, because he needed a liver transplant but he didn't get one, so he died. I realize that many of you are now all messed up and very grief stricken from this news, but please don't tell any of the other Start Band members; they don't know any of this yet. They will find out later in the concert.
I sat there terrified, crestfallen, and shocked. I had only just seen him a few months ago during the school year for the 8th grade Homecoming where the 8th graders come to play at the high school to see how band is. He seemed normal, and overall healthy. I had even asked some of the freshman there whom I new if he was ok. They said yes, so I figured he was ok. I put my clarinet together a little less happier than usual that night, thinking about how all of those high school people and their parents didn't know about it at all. They finally found out after their first song. It was very depressing, because Mr. Fritz, the other band director at Start, stepped down from the podium found a microphone and spoke very clearly and yet very somberly said:
"Ladies Gentlemen, and Start band members, I have some bad news." He took a breath, looked in front of him at all of the unexpected parents along with the junior high band and went on. "As you may have heard, our other band director, Mr. Haddad, has been sick, well, I being the giver of bad news has said that he has died. The liver cancer took him over, and took the life out of him forever."
With that last comment, the whole room gasped. Girls cried in the band, even some boys did too, but even though I didn't know him the way that other people did, I struggled to keep back the tears. But, as all tears are, curious little forms of emotion, I cried, not as much as lots of my friends did, but enough to mess me up and make me even more crestfallen. One of the seniors who was in percussion, Rob, had wrote and then conducted a piece of music that he himself made and dedicated it to Mr. Haddad. On top of that he also gave the band and Mr. Fritz a dozen flowers as a gift of his sadness.
After the concert, the girls in the band who weren't crying now were crying their eyes out over the unforeseen death. And those who did cry an awful lot at the concert cried even harder after it.
It is a thing in my life that I will never forget, because it is something that affected my life, and if that never had happened, I might have never ever meant him....
There is the end of my 2nd chapter. I promise it will get better, I just have to tell you this story before I tell you the other story....
Nicole