5 years

So, yes, it's been that, and she's missed. I still can't quite figure out what happened. It wasn't a conspiracy. She didn't get involved with something in Prague that led her to this. This is not the plot of a novel. It just is what it is, and that's the saddest thing to realize.

At least she's out of her pain.

I wish there had been a better way for her to get there.

32

Happy 32nd Birthday. You would have been 32 today.

It's been a while

Nothing else. Just that.

I haven't forgotten about her.

Happy 30th, Gretchen

You would have been officially old on Saturday.

I remember.

It's been over a year and a half. The strangest thing is looking at photographs of Gretchen and not really the photograph itself; it's her smile in the pictures that ails me to no end. Photographs are prisons. There is no single song, collection of words or amount of tears that can vindicate what happened. So I won't justify it. I'll just remember. I'll remember that it's a choice, to live, to die. Every second is a choice. To be or not to be. It's a decision and the only thing I can do is respect & remember. And I do. I miss you, Gretchen. I miss you beyond my own ability to understand.
“My dear it was a moment
to clutch at for a moment
so that you may believe in it
and believing is the act of love, I think,
even in the telling wherever it went”
-Anne Sexton

These photographs are from my good-bye party in Prague which was "white trash" themed, hence the attire. They're pretty funny, I love them.

Much love to you all,

Niko.

Is anyone still reading?

I thought that I would probably break down on August 23rd, and I didn't. I waited a few days.

A Year Later

It's been one year now, but it still seems like it was yesterday. My parents and I took a trip to Alabama a few weeks ago to see my grandmother and take her out for her birthday. Granny's birthday is two days before Gretchen's but we couldn't do it the weekend due to the anniversary of Gretchen's death. We stopped by the cemetary and left roses for my mom and for Gretchen. It's still odd seeing her tombstone....Today was definitely a rough day, very gloomy all day....

a dream

I just emailed Misha, and I remembered a dream that I had a couple of months ago. I thought I would post it here.

I had just received an email from a friend about another friend from high school, Dave Gallagher: http://www.davidgallagherfoundation.org/. I had not known about Dave's death. And before that, James Weese, and, shortly after Gretchen's death, another member of our high school class, Chris Carrelli. I fell asleep thinking about all of them. They were all friends, at least good enough friends that I had spent time with them outside of school. Dave came to a few parties at my house and confessed an ill-fated crush on one of my friends to me, with disasterous results. James used to ride the bus with me in elementary school, and would sometimes go with us to the Rocky Horror Picture Show, and I saw him around West Chester before he died. Chris was in bands, and sometimes sat at my lunch table, and I saw him at the diner after he got back from Italy a few years ago. I wasn't close friends with anyone else the way I was with Gretchen.

In my dream, I was in the auditorium (from which I was later banned for life) at Conestoga, and people were passing by, up and down the aisles. Gretchen came in, in her skinny jeans, a teal flannel shirt that once belonged to a boy we both liked, and her leather jacket. (How many flannel shirts and thermal long-sleeved shirts did we pilfer from boys we liked in high school? It would have been a massive pile.) She tossed her purple LL Bean backpack on the seat next to mine and sat down. She opened a can of cherry Coke.

"You know, Gretchen, our class isn't doing so well," I said to her.

She nodded, and thought about this for a couple of minutes. We watched people walk up and down.

Then, she looked at me, and said "Let's trade shoes."

I had forgotten about her penchant for trading clothes. Whatever I was wearing, Gretchen wanted to wear, too. We were constantly running around in each other's shoes. I remember coming back from the Downingtown Flea Market the night of a 70's dance. We stopped to pick Gretchen up at Genuardi's as she finished work. On the way to the dance, she decided that we should trade clothes, and we wound up switching outfits quite scandalously in the backseat of someone's car. When we got to the dance, she climbed up on a speaker next to the deejay booth. I was very proud that my black wrap skirt and knee-high boots were having such a fantastic time.

I wonder what ever happened to those purple 10-hole Doc Martens, the counterparts to which are sitting upstairs, unwearable because of the holes in the soles, next to a navy flannel, a patched pair of jeans with Tori Amos lyrics written on them in blue bic pen and a men's extra large Soviet army t-shirt. I can't throw them out. I think I never will.

From Shawn

Shawn sent this to me to post on the blog:

At times during our relationships Gretchen was amazingly kind and charming. She was my first and third “real” girlfriend so there are lots of memories of her that remain wonderful. When I fell for her, I fell hard.

She was smart and talented in a completely effortless way and addictively energetic. People always spoke to me of her modeling potential, but it didn’t really sink in until I went to her modeling school graduation in Philly and she won top honors in her class.

Being with her was like existing inside a wave, forces and tides pulling you along. Then you’d look at the beach and see your towel was suddenly a half a mile away. She had that effect on me and a lot of other people.

There were rough times too. Then as high school romances often do, we ended on a bad note. A whole song of bad notes. We both acted immaturely and petty, as high school kids often do.

In the end, I’m not sure if I really knew Gretchen beyond the face she showed the rest of the world. I always wanted to, but perhaps she wasn’t ready back then. Perhaps I wasn’t either.

I still work with one of her family’s friends and had hoped one day Gretchen and I would get to talking again. “So much drama back then,” I would have said. “I spent most of my day feeling confused about how I was supposed to be feeling then worried about that confusion.”

“Yeah, I’m glad high school’s over,” she would have said, looking at me, studying my expression, listening.

“Me too,” I would have said. “We both turned out all right in the end, huh?”

And she would have just smiled that Cheshire grin, letting the words linger between us.