How Am I Supposed to Feel?

There are a bunch of posts I've been working on finishing up lately, but yesterday, things came to a screeching halt for me when I found out that an old classmate had died.

I am no stranger to death. I have lost a number of family members over the years, as well as friends, pets, and friends of friends. Death has had an enormous impact on how I view life and on how I choose to live it. And while death can be devastating to the ones left behind, it's also something that, for me personally, isn't nearly as scary as it used to be. I think about being born - I have no memory of it, but how traumatizing must it have been? How could I have understood what was happening or where I was going? How could I have had any concept of what living was? Dying is something I've come to view as the natural partner to birth, if you will: everyone who is born must also someday die. In the same way that no one knows what comes after death before they have died (though they may have beliefs about it), no one knew what came after birth before they were born. But being born seemed to work out okay, didn't it?

Learning about my classmate's death has left me confused and wondering how I'm supposed to feel. This guy was in my 7th and 8th grade homeroom. I remember other people talking to him or about it. I know he was very close to another person who was one of the few people who was actually nice to me in high school. (I hated high school. One of the happiest days of my life was the day I graduated. I have a million-watt smile in all of the pictures people took that day, let me tell ya.) He had parents that loved him, a brother, a girlfriend, friends, and extended family. He didn't influence my life until he died, but he influenced a lot of others.

How am I supposed to feel about that? He wasn't my friend. He was barely even an acquaintance. But he was close to some of the people I care about, who are now grieving. I can't really be sad; I hardly remembered him. At the same time, I can't be totally unfeeling: I did know him at some point, he was young, his death was a horrible accident, and he was cared about by people I cared about. How am I supposed to feel?

Have you ever found yourself in a similar situation? How did you feel?