Death---the last sleep? No, the final awakening. ~Walter Scott

First off, I would like to recommend that you read the post "On Death" from my sister Holly's blog. It is silly, really, because I should be allowed to feel how I feel but even now I am afraid of someone being angry at my emotions, and Holly does an excellent job of explaining those feelings. If anyone reads this and is offended for any reason, please let me know. I would rather talk about it than create some sort of unresolved resentment. That's the last thing anyone needs.

When I was a Junior in college, a girl named Rebecca Peterson was killed in a car accident in Vail, CO. Becky had dated and was still best friends with my then boyfriend's younger brother, we'll call him P. I did not know her very well, but as I was close to members of that family I was deeply affected by this loss. I was actually in Denver visiting for the weekend when it happened. It was late September, and right before we were leaving to head to the airport so I could fly back to Utah, P came running downstairs to where we were and told us hurridly that Becky had been in a car accident and was life-flighted to a Denver hospital. He was headed there. Less than two hours later as I sat at the gate in DIA I got the call that she had not survived.

That next week was rough. I wanted to badly to be there for these people that I loved but I had school and I was working two jobs and I was afraid I couldn't afford to travel back to Colorado for the funeral. So I worked, and went to class, but nothing felt normal. Finally Wednesday night, after much debating, I decided that I couldn't not be there.

Thursday morning came, and I dressed in some nice clothes and drove by myself 8 hours to Broomfield, where I made it literally just in time for the candlelight vigil that was held in Becky's honor. I was able to stay through the weekend and attend all the services held.

Flash forward a few months...I was having the worst semester of my life, both scholasticly and emotionally. And yes, those things were closely connected. I had my heart broken, really broken, for the first time in my life and I was not functioning at normal levels in any aspects of life. I was taking a Creative Writing class that semester, from a professor who became one of my favorites. We still keep in contact through email. One of the assignments was to write a personal essay. So maybe for this blog challenge I am cheating a little bit, since this was already written. But aside from the people in that class and my husband, I have not shared this personal essay with anyone. My hands are shaking as I write this because it is hard for me to be this open, it is hard for me to share my writing, and it is extremely hard to remember.

Becky

On the first day of class, about halfway through the course overview, I looked over and saw a girl who looks like Becky. Not exactly like her, but enough that I found myself staring at her. Becky's hair was shorter and somewhat curly. The way this girl's bangs fell to the right across her forehead reminded me of Becky's bangs and how they fell to the right across her forehead not when she was alive but in her coffin at her funeral. They were fixed so perfectly, those bangs, and I remember thinking that whoever fixed her hair like that probably didn't know her when she was alive. They just arranged her bangs like that now that she was dead.

I met Becky through a mutual aquaintance. Our two lives mixed within a family atmosphere, each of us a girlfriend and an outsider. In a family full of brothers and only one sister, I think that I felt like more of an outsider than she did. Her love of cooking made it easy for her to share something with the family--especially the boys--in preparation of daily meals, wheras my lack of interesting ability pushed me to the outskirts. It didn't bother me that much. What bothered me was that when she died the family made extra efforts to include me in things: a sudden influx of emails and phone calls checking to see how I was doing, invites from the whole family to attend random get-togethers, and the expression "I love you" was even tossed arond a few times. I felt like I was supposed to be her replacement, and it bothered me because the shoes of the dead are hard to fill.

She sat right next to me at a birthday lunch once, but I said little or nothing to her. She was friendly and charming, full of contagious laughter and smiling eyes but I was shy and focused on other people. Usually, when I saw her, she was watching the Food Network with the brother who loved her or creating an elaborate feast, like chicken nuggets made from cereal, or ham and bacon kebabs. I never ate her food because I'd always already eaten or was on my way out. Now that she can't make food anymore, I wish I had eaten it once or twice when I had the chance.

The day before she died Becky moved three hours away from home for the first time to attend culinary school. She had scholarships and internships already set up for her once she got there. She was only there for one day before a single-car rollover accident. A friend was driving, but Becky was partially ejected from the vehicle and suffered severe head trauma. By the time the Flight-for-Life helicopter made it to the hospital, it was too late.

Her dad stood at a candlelight vigil a week later and said, remember to hug your children every day because I was lucky enough to have said goodbye to her before she died. He said he had no idea that it would be his last goodbye, but he was glad that he had held her in his arms and said I love you when he dropped her off at school.

The boy who loved her stood at the candlelight vigil and said that his heart hurt the same as it did when he felt love. He said he'd never forget her infectious laughter and smile. He said he loved her, and everyone gathered there could see that he meant it. I knew that he meant it. And now she was dead.

I had a conversation with the boy I loved after she died. She was only eighteen, he said.
She didn't get to get married, he said.
She didn't have any babies.
Maybe people like Becky who die really young get to be the Moms of all the babies who die and go to heaven, too, I said.
He didn't answer.
Maybe God is trying to teach us that life is fragile, I said.
She didn't even get to live on her own, or go to school, or be a grown up at all, he said.
Maybe God knew it was her time to go, so He let her say goodbye to everyone right before, I said.
Maybe God is trying to teach us to appreciate the people who are around us every day, I said.
I'd think that God could come up with a better way of teaching us lessons, he said.
I didn't know what to say back.

The brother who loved her forgave her her faults while she was alive and then they didn't matter anymore when she was dead. But I didn't forgive her--I dwelt. And they do still matter now that she is dead because of all the things they kept me from doing while she was alive.

The chicken nuggets were real. So was the boy who loved her and the Food Network and the laughter and the smiling blue eyes. And her hair. That was real. But that's as far as my superficial knowledge of a girl named Becky who was alive once goes. And I could've known her. I could've eaten her food and spoken to her about her talents. I could've joked with her about us both being outsiders when we sat together at lunch. I could've tried to be her friend.

So it's really not her faults that matter anymore. It's mine.

Now every time I go to that class I sit and wait for the girl who looks like Becky to come into the room. I watch her walk to the same seat that she sits in every day, and say a friendly hello to all the people sitting around her. I watch her flip her bangs ever so slightlly to the right every few minutes. I watch her blink her big blue eyes, breathe in through her mouth, laugh when someone says something funny. And I feel like I'm watching Becky.

But I'm not.

There are things that I would change now, reading this again. For example, now I have the maturity to recognize that the family reaching out to me was not because they wished for a replacement, but most likely because they wished to appreciate the people in their lives, and I was one of those people. But I was foolish and didn't let them. I still am a little foolish when it comes to letting people in.

And I do think that parts of my writing are a bit dramatic. But I wrote with sincerity, and so I didn't change those parts either.

The girl, the one from my class, I actually still see her. She started working for the company that I work for about a year after I wrote this. I don't think she recognizes me, but I will never forget her face. We've spoken a few times, first when she changed her name because she got married and more recently because she had a baby. Her first. It was a girl.

What a bizzare world we live in.

Rebecca Peterson, July 1989-September 2007
Photo by P. Murphy