What Kind of Life Has It Been

Three or four weeks ago, as most of you know, a friend of mine died. She was a long distance friend whom I met a year and a half ago on the band trip in Arizona. She lived in Westfield, Maine and was 18 years old. She died without warning and the cause is still unknown. One morning, the week of her prom and two weeks before graduation, she simply didn't wake up. I found out two weeks later from another girl I'd met on the trip.
When she died, Alanna and I had been out of touch for a little while. I actually sent her an e-mail trying to reopen a dialogue a few days before she died. I don't know if she ever read it.
I cried when I found out. I went to the tribute website, and I looked at the pictures, and the last picture was from the grand canyon, the day I met her. There's a good chance I took that picture. It's beautiful - she's standing on the edge of the canyon, with the rest of it stretching before her, her arms in the air and a perfect, carefree smile on her face. I couldn't take my eyes off that picture, off of that smile. I wrote a short, jumbled tribute to her, for the sake of her parents. But I haven't yet said the things that I feel need to be said. I'm doing that here now.
The grieving process has been weird and difficult. Weird because she was so young, so alive and vibrant. Weird because there is no one here who remembers her, there is no memorial service for me to go to, no one to share my memories of her with, no one who knows the person she was. I still want to say is. That's the other weird - she hasn't been an active part of my life for a long time. It's too easy to tell myself she's still alive and we've just lost touch. It's really easy, and as long as I do it I'm fine more or less. But as soon as I force myself to really remember I break down. I'm crying even as I write this.
The experience has also changed me. It's made me very concious of my own mortality, and as a result nothing matters as much to me anymore. If Alanna could go to bed one night and just not wake up, any of us could. One of the results of that is I can't leave people on bad terms anymore. Anytime I have a fight with someone and don't make up I think, "What if she's gone tomorrow?" I feel guilty for losing touch with Alanna. Not because I think it would have made any difference, but because I could have had her in my life a few months more than I did, and I would have been better for it. All time is precious with the people we love.
But at the same time it's made me detached from what I used to call my life. Everything that seemed like life and death before is unimportant in the face of real death. I no longer really care that I haven't taken the drive test yet, or finished the veteran's project. Nothing has a strong emotional effect on me anymore - I can be happy and sad, but it's like being happy for a movie character. It's a surface feeling, without depth. This is the reason I've only recently started blogging again.
I don't know how much of this is temporary and how much is a permanent change. I think I'm always going to treasure relationships, to tell people how much they mean to me whenever I can instead of waiting til we say goodbye, in case we never get the chance. But I know that Alanna, even though I only knew her in person for a few days, wil always be with me. I can see her that day on the canyon perfectly in my mind, and though it brings tears to my eyes to look at it I still do. It would be wrong to forget her.
The last real conversation I had with Alanna still hovers clearly in my mind. I said to her, "It's great that we're keeping in touch but I know it can't last forever. The Fiesta Bowl trip wasn't some annual camp; in all likelihood we'll never see each other again."
She replied, "Oh don't say that. It's depressing."
"But it's true."
"No," she said, "If we really want to see each other again, we will."
And I said "Ok, tell you what. In 2006, when we're both at college, I'll call you up and we'll find a city between our two colleges and meet for coffee or something."
"It's a date," she said.
It was remembering that conversation that set me crying originally - I don't know that we would have gone through with it before, but I know we can't now. A few days later while I was playing with my new cellphone I discovered that the calendar function can schedule years into the future. So I went to 2006, to the day she died, and I scheduled in "Visit Alanna." I hope to visit her grave that day. I hope that in a year I'll still remember her and still care enough about her to honor our date.
It was fate that allowed me to meet Alanna on the train to the Grand Canyon a year and a half ago. I didn't realize then, or even after, the blessing I recieved in knowing her for the short time I did. Whenever I talked to her she could cheer me up - she was so kind and so smart and so beautiful. I want to end this as a tribute to her, to the wonderful person I wish you all could have known, may she rest in peace.