unknownfate

I wasn't able to remember Allison Krauss' name the other day. We were talking about saddest Disney moments and I submitted the Baby Mine scene from Dumbo and that there had been heart-breaking cover done of the song. I just couldn't remember the singer's name. Then, today, I remembered: Allison.

I always try to make a mnemonic something or other when I can't remember a thing, even when it's irrelevant. So I was thinking Allison, Allison, like- And then I had to stop because the only Allison I could think of at that moment was the girl who died on my birthday back in college. Nut allergy. Seeing her parents clean out her dorm may have been the saddest thing ever.

Thinking of that made me remember the girl who died back in junior high. I can't think of her name, but I can remember her face and her hairstyle and the denim skirt she wore a lot. I wasn't bestest friends with her, but I remember how sweet she was to everybody. When she died, it was very sudden. We hadn't even known she wasn't well. I'm not sure she did either.

Everybody at school went to pieces, even the people who had never (to my knowledge) spoken a word to her. We were given excused absences to go to her funeral and I heard some kids say that at least it wasn't school. I didn't go. I didn't want to be lumped in with all the kids (I thought were) pretending to take it so hard, and I didn't want to compare my sadness with the incomprehensible grief of her family. Today, I kind of wish I had, just to have something else to remember about it.

I had a teacher die that year too. She hit by a drunk driver. Her daughter was a year older than me, I think. I was never able to get the nerve to tell her how sorry I was and how much I had liked her mom. What could that matter to a girl who had lost her mother? I'm not a backward teenager anymore, so I wonder if it's too late to say something.

The boy I was sure I would marry when I was eleven and he was seventeen died the year I moved back from Alaska. I didn't know until I saw the crowd at the funeral home and was told who had died.

The kid I used to go camping with died last week. His grandma was my babysitter before I started school. He had found me on facebook the week before that. I hadn't seen him in years either and now I never will.

I don't know why Allison Krauss sent me so sad this evening.