January 29, 2008

8 Years ago today....

It was a very sad day, indeed.

8 years ago today, roughly about the time I'm writing this (at about 2:30 in the afternoon), my friend Aimee died. She had been visiting my ex best friend, after I had gotten them back together (well, I gave each of them the other's phone number, so I guess that's helping them get back together some, right?), and was on her way to seeing her step sister. She went to turn off of one local road onto another, but didn't see an oncoming truck due to how bright the sun was, plus the fact that the snowpile at the corner probably wasn't too short, seeing as how it was the end of January and we had gotten a decent amount of snow. The hit was directly to her side of the car, the driver's side. Her younger brother was in the car with her, but he only got minor scrapes and bruises. He's 21 now, it's hard to believe. Her older brother and I graduated from high school together, I haven't seen him or his wife in forever. I haven't seen her husband (of just 6 months) since that year either. I haven't seen her mother or grandmother (who I had emailed back and forth with a bit several years back) for ages either.

I know she's looking down now and taking care of her family. It's sad that she died when she did, because so many things were coming into place for her---she had found a good steady guy, who was crazy about her, she had worked out most of her craziness by then (because boy was this girl crazy :-)), she was looking forward to moving on and making a life for herself.

She lives on. Several of her organs and tissues were donated, so people have pieces of her. Her spirit lives on---she was such a hard driving spirit, I can't imagine there being any justice in letting someone like that just be extinguished. There were several times just after she died that I still felt a connection to her, and those connections help assure me that she's in fact living on, on another plane.

There will always be 2 very special memories with her.

One day my ex best friend and I went down to her house when my ex best friend was over, because when we first moved to where my parents lived, she lived 2 houses down. We were sitting in the living room watching MTV when the video for Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" came on, since it was when Wayne's World (the movie) was all the rage. She and I took one look at each other, because we were both into metal---and when the tempo picked up, we sat there and headbanged for the song. It was so awesome---there is a connected memory, at a dance, where she and I were the only girls in a circle with some guys headbanging to one song or another. But the look on my ex best friend's face at Aimee's house was just hilarious.

Then, after we had met back up just before she died, we spent New Years 2000 together. She called up and invited me, T and D over to watch the ball drop, etc, at their apartment. It was fun...she and I drove back to our apartment to pick up our vcr because they had Chasing Amy and I had always wanted to watch that movie, but they had no vcr. It was cool just sitting and talking in the car with her, then walking back a bit of a distance to their house because we couldn't for one reason or another park in front of theirs. On the way, we saw the boyfriend of one of Tom's co-workers that T and D and I had spent some time hanging out with, them and their family, and he was surprised that we knew each other. He drove cab, and I guess he had driven her around a few times.

They are just really cool memories, and I will always remember her, stopping to pause sometimes to either relive the memories we had, or to check and see what day it is and how close it is to this anniversary or her birthday.