In my almost 32 years, I have experienced death. I have had people I love, close family, and friends die. It is never something one wants to have experienced in their life, but it serves a purpose to the living, it keeps one in check with remembering what is truly important, and reminds you that there is much more to a life than just living. It is how you live that is just as important to the longevity you are blessed with. We all have the ability to sustain a life, but you have to choose to live.
I met Amy volunteering at the high school library. While we were absolute opposites in many ways, she was shy, I was outgoing, she was beyond studious, and I was a procrastinator, she wanted to blend in, I wore purple jeans. In this complete dichotomy of opposites, we forged a great friendship. She talked to me about her awkward family, the boys she liked, her dreams and thoughts, and I shared all of mine as well. She was so crazy smart; she helped me with my math homework, even when we had to via instant message after she left for college. She was always there to help me figure out how to manage my never-ending battle with those letters that worked their way into math equations.
February 19th, 1998 was a Thursday, starting off just like any ordinary Thursday. I got up early, my friend Jason had picked me up for school at my house, in his boat of a car that we both loved since it meant our freedom! Class was normal, had lunch with my little pack of friends, nothing out of the ordinary. I was excited as that night one of my best friends in high school, Amy, who had gone off to college at Florida International in Melbourne the year before, was driving home that day so we could celebrate her birthday that night. Her real birthday was the 23rd, on Monday, but she had a big school project and wanted to spend the weekend back on campus preparing, so we moved up the party. Her family owned a local Chinese restaurant, and me, Amy, and my two other close friends, Maggie and Leah, who were still in high school with me, were all going to meet up at her parents restaurant, order pizza and have cake, and then head over to go bowling at the local bowling alley across the street from her family’s restaurant. Maggie came by and picked me up around 7pm and we met Leah at the restaurant, and Amy was there when we arrived. We always joked about ordering pizza to a Chinese restaurant, so tonight was the night we were going to do it! I was a big scrapbooker then so of course I wanted pictures, and had forgotten my camera, so luckily Amy had one that night, so I commandeered it for the evening to capture it all on our little yellow roll of Kodak film. We had her favorite, strawberry flavored cake and pizza with her parents and little brother; sang, hugged, took pictures, and then headed over for bowling. Me in my Elmo t-shirt, with my keys around my neck on the 1998 accessory du jour, the lanyard. Amy in her high wasted, tight, white, bongo jeans and coke bottle glasses, we were living the good life. I don’t remember who won or who lost. I just remember me being the paparazzi as normal, and having a great time.
My curfew was midnight, which was extended since it was a special night with Amy coming into town I had negotiated to extend it. I also remember leaving the bowling alley and it was pouring rain and we were caught completely off guard. We had driven over from the Chinese restaurant in Maggie’s car, and so we piled back in it to have her take Leah and Amy back to their cars, and then Leah was going to give me a lift home since she was closest to me. It was just a complete monsoon, and I remember Amy complaining about her white Keds getting wet. Leah, Amy and I jumped out at the curb in front of the now closed restaurant, and said our goodbyes while Maggie drove away. We made plans to try to get together in about two weeks when Amy would be home again, and talked about checking if our Spring Break’s aligned so we could make some beach plans. Leah and I ran to her car and Amy to her’s already packed for the trip back. I had made a CD for Amy for her birthday that had the new Janet Jackson song, Together Again, on it as we both loved it from the radio and had been emailing about it earlier that week. She kept it out in her hand when she ran to the car as she wanted to listen to it on her hour and a half drive to Melbourne.
Amy had introduced me to email. Funny now thinking of how we take it for granted, but before she left for college in the August of 1997 she came to my house, to our new Gateway computer, with our dialup internet connection and installed ICQ, the new thing all the college kids used, which was one of the first instant messengers. She also set me up with a Hotmail account Elmofreak1@hotmail.com. (We both were stunned that someone else could be an Elmofreak so when we set it up and that name was taken we added the number one.) My ICQ name became ElmoJulie and it was with this new technology we would stay up late doing homework “together” online after she left for college. Chatting about class, teachers, plans, friends, you name it.
Amy had a little champaign colored Acura, which out of my friends, was a pretty darn nice car at the time. It always was super clean and smelled of Chinese food, as sometimes it doubled as a delivery vehicle on the weekends and breaks she was home on. Plus the years prior when her family business was her part time job too. Amy’s family was Buddhist and while her parents were very strong in their faith, it was not blinding to them, as that would later become so much more evident. Amy was a just a good person. She was kind, thoughtful, innocent, and wanted to be an astronomer. She loved science, space, and reason. She was rational and grounded and a strong and stable friend that was dependable in many respects, with her time, her thoughts, and her honesty. Looking back now, you can see the rarity of these attributes in many relationships today. She had not ulterior motive, no push to move you down to lift herself up, and was selfless in many aspects of her everyday life, and demeanor. We should all strive to have a little “Amy” in our lives.
That night as Leah and I drove off, and Amy headed north on US 1 and Leah and I turned left and headed south, the rain picked up, by the time I got home, the rain was so bad that just running from my driveway to my front door I was pretty soaked. I came in and my mom was in the living room watching TV, and said to me “Amy didn’t drive back to school tonight did she? The rain is heading right her way and it is a bad storm” I told her yes Amy left when we did to go back and I am sure she will be fine, brushing off her comments as typical overly and unnecessarily worried mother comments.
The next day I got up with my usual 5:30 AM alarm, and with the usual routine, Jason picked me up, and my first hour was ironically with one of Amy and my favorite teachers, Mr. Contoupe. He was my swim coach and also taught leadership and a smattering of other classes, heading into his portable classroom that early morning just beating the bell, it was still drizzling outside. I took my seat and chatted with a few friends around me waiting for class to begin. Just as the bell rang, so did the class phone on my teachers desk. Mr. Contoupe answered and after just a few seconds, he made eye contact with me, shook his head a few times, said he understood, and that he would need someone to cover his class immediately. His eyes became full of tears, and I knew, I just knew, I didn’t need to have him say anything. I just felt it. It was the strangest feeling.
Amy had lost control about 45 mins north of where we left off last night; she hit a patch of water in the road and just lost control. They didn’t think she was speeding, but it was just bad bad weather that came on, quickly flooding parts of the road more than likely. It was on a section of road where it curved and there was a tiny guard rail but that her car had gone over and had fallen a little ways, rolling over. She was airlifted to the Melbourne hospital, and was in critical condition, things were not looking good.
Mr. Contoupe and I left campus immediately and headed up to the hospital. We both cried the whole way. It was awful. (It is here that you can see that Mr. Countoupe is no ordinary teacher, he is a whole other blog post later.) We arrived after the hour and a half drive, but it seemed like days. I was not prepared for what I was about to see. There in ICU was Amy, all bandaged up, with every machine I can imagine connected to her, helping her breathe, beeping and ticking and ringing, I first remember the noise of it all and how loud that hum seemed to be coming from the room, thinking how all of this noise, was keeping this peacefully sleeping person alive. Then I focused on Amy, I saw her face, she was not recognizable, her chest heaving back and forth with each forced breath in, her swollen and cut face, hands and arms, with errant stitches that seemed so haphazard all over her. Their bright blue filament cut with jagged edges jutting out of her like small antennae. Next were her parents, TK and Jenny. I fell into their arms, me just sobbing, I breathed in the fresh smell of bok choy and sesame oil that permeated their skin, they had gotten the news early in the morning, right as they arrived at their restaurant prepping for that days business. I didn’t know this at the time, but her parents never cried during this, which I am sure was super human of them, as in their culture they felt that tears would prevent a soul from choosing the next life, and prevent them from moving on. They were absolute rocks. I cannot imagine now as an adult and the love you have for a child, being able to contain this. It was a lesson in self-sacrifice to me.
Jenny still had on her white apron wrapped around her tiny waist, with soy sauce stained on the front. They immediately raced to the hospital in the early morning hours. Her brother Jonathan was quietly sitting in a chair in the corner, I gave him a hug but he did not get up or look at me. He was still in shock and was a quiet soul to begin with. I don’t think he could wrap his head around what was happening. I don’t think any of us could.
Small Buddhist figures were scattered in the room and incense was burning, we held hands, her parents chanted, and I had never felt more helpless and tiny in my whole life. I felt so insignificant, so meaningless in light of this greater force working against us. I think before we got the results over the next few days, I think we knew at that point that Amy was gone already. That it was not her lying there anymore; it was a shell, just a wrapper of a soul.
Over the next few days they did brain wave tests, responses tests, anything and everything, all of them came back with zero activity. I missed school the next few days, either intentionally or just plain skipping it, to drive to be with Amy each day. No one said anything; they knew I had to go. School did not matter at this point. This was a larger lesson, a lesson in life, and death. That I unfortunately was having wither I liked it or not. I went through all the stages of grief, I got angry, I was sad, I was depressed, hopeless, angry again. I stopped functioning. I stopped eating, showering, caring. I just stopped. The world stood still. By the end of the week they decided to unplug the machines, it was Monday. I went in one last time alone with Amy. Her family gave me a moment to just talk to her, be with her one last time. I held her hand, cried, and told her that I will never forget her, or what she was about, and that I will try my best to be the kind of person she was. That I had learned so much from her in patience, fortitude, ambition, and innocence, that it would not stop with her and that her life had such meaning to everyone around her. Her parents and brother had some time with her, and then we all went in together, holding hands around her, her parents chanting. The nurse came in and asked if we were ready, and the room became calm and peaceful, the machines silenced and just the quiet chanting warmed the room. It put a trance on the room, on me, and it was so so calm. After a few shutters, and a few small sighs, her chest raised and lowered one last time, and that was all. That was the last moment we had.
I struggle now, as an adult, if I needed to see that at 17. If I needed to be that close to death, dying, and losing someone I cared about in such a personal way. I hear of parents wanting to shelter their children from things like this, and for me, it was necessary. I needed to see it, to touch her, to be with her. I need to see her go, and to really know that I was there for her, and she was there for me. Looking back now, I have to struggle to see this Amy, this bruised and battered shell. I can easily recall her warm funny smile, and her curious eyes behind her thick glasses, and her quick and bright laugh. That is my immediate memory, that is what I know. I remember the Amy I choose to, not the last one I saw, and for the chance to spend those last days with her and her family helped me grieve and grow, it was like her last gift to me. The giver was just not quite done yet, even in her final days.
Amy always would share with me how she felt so insignificant in the world, so small, and so I told her that she was leaving unforgettable, that she was now ingrained in me, my daily life, and my reason to be better. To be the best version of myself I could be. To be a small ode to her each and every day, to volunteer more, study harder, get through every level of schooling I was able, and to never settle. To her family, she was so so much more than any of this, they were and I am sure still are, crushed. Something like this is I am sure just unrecoverable for a family. Later, I would try to visit them whenever I was in town from various colleges, or jobs, but I slowly lost touch with them. Their grief ate at them, eventually not being able to keep the restaurant open. Her brother had trouble in school and socializing, and while I have tried to find them recently, I have not been able to track them down. I wonder if they went back to Taiwan. I do want to find them again, and let them know that a little piece of her is still a part of me, and that I strive to keep her alive each day.
Her funeral in the coming days, showed me a strength that I cannot imagine, in Buddhist tradition she should have been cremated immediately after dying, but her parents knew that with all the young people involved in her life, that they would need closure, so they broke tradition, and gave her an American funeral first. Since they were not strong English speakers, they asked Maggie and me to give her Eulogy. It was the most difficult thing I had ever done at that point, and I think now looking ahead, it will still remain as the hardest thing I will have to endure. The funeral home was packed, with her new college friends, and roommates, her high school classmates and teachers, her parents, brother, family, and customers. During the entire service her parents were in the front row, consoling and hugging those around them, without shedding a tear. Her mother shook with the sobs forming inside of her, but she held them in, she demonstrated that strong and silent resolve that I had respected in her daughter too. This act to me was her last gift to Amy, to let her leave, to let her go.
Her parents had bought her a new glaring white pair of her favorite Bongo skinny leg jeans, new white Keds, and a trendy shirt that I knew she would have tried on a few times, but would never have actually bought. It was something that made me smile seeing her in that shirt. Her first and only crush, Randal, came to the funeral that day too. I gave him a hug, and told him how her first dance with him at her senior prom was something she talked about all the time, and that she had such a crush on him. He was so kind and warm, and I just wished he knew the Amy I knew. Not the shy, bookworm, he thought she was. I thought about how embarrassed Amy would be wearing a trendy shirt, meeting her crush. She would have been mortified, except maybe the new jeans might have evened things out in her eyes.
After the funeral, many of the kids came back to my parent’s house, we just needed somewhere to all go, we weren’t ready to leave each other just yet. My parents were very supportive though all of this, and I am sure it was not easy on them to see me have to live through these days. I don’t think they really knew the extent of the toll this took on me, but they gave me my space and let me have the freedom to manage my life, my grief, and to come to my own conclusions and thoughts. I can appreciate now as an adult how difficult this would be to sit back and watch.
In the
days the followed I found out more about Amy and her last few days, they
retrieved her camera after the accident, and her parents could not bear to
develop it, so they gave it to me. I had it developed and out of the 36 frames,
8 pictures came out, 7 were from a small birthday party her roommates in
Melbourne had thrown for her over the previous weekend, also a strawberry cake,
and showed her laughing in her dorm room with balloons and her new friends.
Then there were about 25 black squares on the negatives, no images, nothing.
The night of our bowling and party had somehow been erased; those happy moments
only existed in memories now. Then one final image, preceded by several more
black rectangles of overexposed film, this one image from our night out was the
one picture Amy had actually taken that night, it was of me sitting on Maggie’s
lap at the bowling alley, and we are both smiling and happy, with Amy behind
the camera. It was like a final image of what Amy saw, and we could then see
what she saw through the lens that night. It was odd to me how this could have
happened, as how can this one image survive amidst the overexposed frames? It has to be Amy’s own intervention. The
other thing that was returned to me after the accident was the CD I had given
her that night, just the disc was ejected from the car, and the case was thrown
from the car we assume. She was listening to that Janet Jackson song “Together
Again” when she essentially died. The song we both loved, and now the lyrics
are all the more fitting. Amy’s family decided she would have wanted to
continue to give, even in death, and donated her organs. They were able to take
several and I know were able to make several other families extraordinary grateful
for her and her families generosity. It was a catalyst for many friends affected
by their loss, make this choice as well in the coming days. Not long after Amy’s
death, I turned 18 and I became a first time blood donor as well as many
friends, something that when I am able, I try to do as well, and hope others
still continue too.
I hope one day to find her family again, to see how they
are, and to let them see that a small part of Amy is still alive, that I try to
find her patience, her drive, her analytical side, her quiet and thoughtful
demeanor (good grief do I need more of that!), her peace. She made her mark on
me, and on many of those around her. I can only imagine what great things she
could have done, if she had a fair shot at a long life. I would have loved to
be at her wedding day, her have her at mine. For her to have met Nathan and
eventually Kyle, and be able to visit us, and be a part of my life still. It is
these sad realities that make you realize how finite losing someone is. When
you can put tangible examples from life’s journey that you can picture that
person in, but know it can never be, that is when you realize you are still
grieving, even years later. 
