For the past three years whenever this day has come around I have been thinking about death. About how death should not be judged even though it seems that since the beginning of time people have been doing so. And I do have to admit I was one of those people.

In 2013, I experienced two loses. Both of these people, I will admit, I did not know very well or even at all depending on the particular person. The first was the loss of classmate. She had been someone who had been in my group of friends and while I had not known her extremely well, we did know each other and I was very saddened by her death. She had passed away from cystic fibrosis, a disease she had been battling all her life, and had only been in high school at the time of her passing. We had written Facebook posts, comforted each other, attended her funeral, helped with a candle light vigil at the school, etc. She is still someone I think of fondly and very often.

That same year in July, I experienced another death. This time it was the death of one of my favorite actors on one of my favorite shows at the time, Cory Monteith from "Glee." He had died due to a heroin overdose. When I had heard of his passing I had awoken early in the morning and had gotten the message through tweet. After that the rest of the day was a vivid but blurry memory of people asking me how I was feeling about It, posting statuses online, talking to friends who loved him as much as I did, etc. While fans did not really have a memorial service to go to, they could download the songs from the tribute episode that aired in October to help out a charity Cory loved and watch the tribute episode along with the world as it gave a chance for fans and the other actors on the show to pay tribute to Monteith.

One difference though was reactions. Many people react to death differently; some bottle up their pain, some embrace it, others take their anger or sadness out on others, some want to express their emotions to anyone and everyone they can, and some only want to cry. I have felt all of these emotions at one point or another and not just with dealing with any of the deaths I have dealt with in my life besides those listed above. However, one thing I realized after Cory’s death is that death should not be judged if it was not something that was intentionally hurting others or by an awful person. For instance, just because someone dies in a car crash while driving while intoxicated or someone dies from sliding on black ice, does not make either his or her deaths any less or more important than the other. While some may think that those two deaths are complete opposites, and maybe they are, the result is still the same.

When my friend passed away we had had to go to an assembly the week after on drunk driving, Our school did this assembly every so many years and it seemed like a good time to have one as the prom would be happening soon. Throughout the day the presentations we had to attend made me sad, but by the end of the school day when we had had a fake funeral (just a few days after having gone to a real one) as part of the anti drinking and driving sketch, I started to get angry. “Why did we have to be sad for people that did something reckless that ended up killing them when last week a fellow student at this school actually died from something she could not control…shouldn’t that matter more?” I had thought. I really felt that my beliefs were true.

That was until I experienced what it was like to lose someone I loved and admired from something that could be argued was “their fault.”

While I will disagree with anyone who thinks that drug addiction is anything but a disease, I do understand there is a difference between a disease brought on by your own possibly reckless actions and a disease brought own by nothing of yours or anyone else’s fault. After Cory died I was really shocked, but also mad at how some were treating his death as if he did not deserve our love or a “RIP” post due to how he died. During that time I realized how wrong I had been. Almost any death of a person is tragic. They have family, friends, loved ones, and many other things in their life that made them loved by others. I came to the conclusion that cause of death does not mean that they are not allowed to be missed or loved. It did not matter if someone had passed away from a heart attack or suicide or drugs or in a car crash. It matters who the person was as a person and remembering their life. People, especially nowadays, like to feel that just because they are behind a keyboard means that they are God and have all the answers. They feel that only people they deem worthy deserve their respect, especially when they pass away. This also includes telling others why they are wrong to feel sad for another person’s death.

Those beliefs though are 100 percent wrong. Whether the death was intentional or unintentional, controllable or not, or whatever the case may be, it all ends in the same result. Results of death are something many people ponder and think about. They think about the “What if's” or what could have been done differently, and while it is good to think of that to help possibly stop another death from occurring in the same fashion to somebody else, it will not bring any particular person back. The important thing to remember when someone dies is what they did with their life, more importantly what they did that helped affect others in positive ways. Whether they donated to charities or even just made one person’s day, they were an important part in the family, friends, and/or fans of that particular person and their sadness for that person’s passing does not diminish or become invalid because of how the person died. Even if you did not care for that particular person, how they died should not be used as ridicule, as it is mean-spirited and disrespectful to those who did care about the particular person who passed. When someone you did not care for passes away, it is best to use the golden rule of, "If you do not have anything nice to say, do not say anything at all."

This does not mean that everyone who dies is a good person, but directly targeting loved ones to tell them that their friend, or father or mother or brother or sister or significant other or whoever’s death was something that the person deserved because of such and such reason, is one of the most disrespectful things you can do, especially to grieving friends and family.

I think Chris Colfer’s character, Kurt, said it best when he said, “everyone wants to talk about how he died, too, but who cares? One moment in his whole life; I care more about how he lived and anyone who has a problem with that should remember that he was my brother.”