I get the impression from speaking with people that I think a lot more than is average. And one of the things I constantly do is think of moments in time or scenes or people that I haven't seen in a great many years, or who've shuffled off this mortal coil. Tonight I thought I'd write about the later.
Her name was Helene (pronounced Hel-en) and I met her when I was roughly 16. It feels weird to say this about someone who's no longer with us, but it was normal to say then I thought she was beautiful. For the next few years, she and I had an intermitent-at-best friendship. This was partly do to our mutual attraction to one another and mostly do to me being sort of an asshole about that. I've made countless mistakes in my romantic life but I never really held on to them as long as the ones I made with her. Maybe it was because I attempted to be logical about a passionate situation and screwed up royally.
I can't say we were serious or that, at the time I'd found out she had died that we were close. I would often think about her and wonder if she ever did the same. In the near recent past, living in the town she had grown up in, I attmpted to track her down. I found her on Facebook and her profile was sparce. I assumed it was one of those "tried it and hated it" profiles. In fact, it wouldn't even let me post or message her. I was told (by the computer) that what I could do was write a message and tag her in it. I did and wished her a Merry Christmas and hoped things were well.
Then I got a message from a mutal friends (who I was better friends with). I remember the weight on my chest when I read she had died. As these things tend to do, I think I'd lost touch with normality - I googled her to find news articles, rememberence pages, and some page that let me know she was working to educate inner city youth. I was sad and numb at the same time. I went back to that Facebook page to check on one thing: Most folks with even the tightest security settings for some reason don't lock up their profile photos. I always assume that they don't understand locking your profile pictures doesn't mean hiding your current profile photo. To whatever end this was luck, who ever had locked up her page post-mortem failed to make the same move, even though her current profile picture was the default silhouette.
It was deep in the month of Decemeber and had to be around midnight when I saw the 4 old profile photos. I mention this because it added to the haunting I felt; two of the photos were her, staring into a webcam presumably to try it out. I'm sure it was the situation, but she seemed sad and empty. And I must have just looked for around 10 minutes, thinking of all the wrongs and missed opportunities. It wasn't sadness or loss. It was something beyond emotion where I felt like she would always be a part of me.
So here I am tonight, writing a tribute to a woman that I barely knew in reality but still think about on a regular basis. I can't help but think that for a passing romance, she's shaped my life in innumerate ways, and the least I could do was honor her memory in a never-read Blog on the internet. It makes me sad to think we lost her early when its clear her intent was to make an impact on the lifes on many more with less advantages and to whom she would help more.
Such is life though. Her memory should carry on in those she managed to touch by the young age of 25. And it would be my hope that, in her continued presense in my mind, I should attempt to reach even half as far as she did in a small attempt to honor the dead.
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