Salt bagels, the movie Sirens, Elizabeth Bishop are three things that I never understood about Sasha. Our friendship goes way beyond those issues we debated. We met in second grade in Brownies and kind of looked at each other and drifted apart. We met up again in High School, our sophomore year. We met over an odd game of sticks, some kind of rhythm thing that we never got right. Since then, we were each other’s half. She is the only one with the same sense of humor, passions as I have, the understanding. Together we drank coffee, listened to Tracy Chapman – basically were two teenagers. We talked about the future and through college were determined to stay close. You ask me how I am and I will say, “Oh, I’m ok”. But I tell you now that I have lost part of my soul. Sasha is the sister I never had, the best friend I will ever have. And while part of me questions why I was left behind, the other part knows it does not matter but that only I must survive and continue on with the life that I am lucky enough to have before me…Because otherwise Sasha would be really, really furious at me.
I ask you to think of a best friend you haven’t spoken with in a few years and keep meaning to call, and I ask you to give them a call tonight or tomorrow. I ask you to plan to do something you have been putting off in years, whether it be a quick cup of coffee, whether to go dancing, whether to go to that museum you keep meaning to, and actually follow through…Because if you put it off, it will never get done…There were so many things we put off.
Sasha would have made a brilliant professor, would have been a key figure in archeology. She understood and loved the subject so well. She was a beautiful person. She was strong and independent, kind and overwhelmingly caring. At times, a little crazy, but aren’t we all! I only hope to be half as good as her throughout my life. I hope all of us strive for that. I refuse to think of her in the past tense because I know she is still here somewhere looking down and saying, ”Ok, what are you talking about”.
One quick story I would like to tell…it is the last time I saw her when she was coherent. I had jury duty last week, as only I can, and of course I got chosen. And I thought, “Hey, I am half way there, might as well go see Sasha”. I arrived the same day she was told she didn’t have much longer to live. She had been sleeping, then she woke up and looked at me. And I said, “Sasha, I have been chosen for jury duty”. She laughed and said it was typical. She thought it was so funny. She laughed her real laugh…she hadn’t laughed like that in a while. And then that was the last time she was coherent. So while part of me aches for the fact that our last conversation was about jury duty, I know that I heard her laugh and I know she was there. I am going to miss her more than anything in the world.
This is really hard. When I found out that she was going to die soon, I remembered something that had happened when we were younger. We were at Park and Marina’s old house. I was 8 or 9 and she was 13 or 12. She had some friends over that were her age. Who wants to hang out with an 8 year old if you are 13? Well she did. And she invited me to play with her friends. She was always so nice to me even though I am 4 years younger than she is. And she invited me to go visit her at college. That was fun.
When I saw her last week, it made me think about her more. I just think that I am lucky to have known her. She was a wonderful person, one of the nicest people I have ever met. I will miss her. I am just glad I knew her.
I knew Sasha in two capacities. One was in high school, which was a typical high school group-friend thing, and I knew her through a youth group at the Unitarian Universalist Church in Framingham. That is really where we developed our bond…a spiritual bond, a tight bond. It was our safe haven throughout high school.
Sasha and I had a lot of really good times. She made life fun. I remember going to Houlihan’s and picking up the waiter there and inviting him to Bickford’s afterwards. At the age of 17, that was the only place we could go after 10 o’clock. And I remember singing karaoke at the annual church dinner “Why must I be a teenager in love”.
I have a lot of wonderful memories of Sasha. Over the past week I have felt like a piece of me has been lost and what I have realized is that it is not lost. I will have something that will stay with me forever. That part of me that is Sasha will always be with me. She is part of who I have become. She is a big part of the reason that I am the woman who I am now. And I will never forget that.
I said I wasn’t going to do this, but I am going to give it a try. I was one of Sasha’s archeology professors at Hamilton. I didn’t know her as a first year student because I was on leave. I met her at the anthropology picnic and I thought “Wow, who is this student”. As soon as I had her in class, I knew she was something special. She was such a good thinker and you know as teachers, we like those. She came marching in my office, maybe three or four weeks into the fall semester. She is just a sophomore and they don’t declare their majors until the end of the sophomore year and so they have a different advisor first and second year. She says, “You know, Charlotte, I don’t know why I should have this other advisor. I know I am going to major in archeology and I know all the classes I am going to take and I want you to be my advisor and I want to change right now.” I said, “Well, ok, I think we have to petition the Dean.” “Well, I’ll take care of it”, she says. In a week, I got a little note. “You have got a new advisee”. So…
By the end of that year, I realized something had happened to me. I think I am a pretty good teacher, but I don’t get emotionally involved with my students. I get emotionally involved in their academics. But somehow, this girl had hooked me and I was emotionally involved with her. I cared about her. A teacher’s legacy is their students. I am not a parent. I don’t have any children. But Sasha changed me in a way no other student ever had. She changed me. She changed my way of teaching and she changed my involvement so that now I am a better teacher, a more involved teacher because I see so much more in my students than a good thinker.
Sasha was for a lot of us, at least for me, and a lot of her friends and family, someone who had a lot of strength. Sometimes when I was down, I would turn to Sasha as one I could lean on. Probably her great talent as a writer and her great ability to care about other people made her a kind of voice for all of us.
I found this parable in a book I have. It gave me strength trying to conceptualize losing a friend, who is so important to all of us in small and large ways, this early and after knowing her for so short of a time. I just want to share it with everyone. It’s called The Parable of Immortality. It was written by Reverend Harry Van Dyke.
“I am standing upon the seashore. A ship at my side spreads her white sails in the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. She is an object of beauty and strength and I stand and watch until at last she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come down to mingle with each other. Then someone at my side says ‘There she goes’. Gone where? Gone from my sight, that is all. She is just as large, vast and hollow and spar as when she left my side and just as able to bear the load of living freight to the place of destination. That diminished size is in me, not in her. And just at the moment when someone at my side says ‘there she goes’, there are other eyes watching her coming and other voices ready to take up the glad shout, ‘Here she comes!’ ”
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I have written something down but I forgot it. And I was late so Sasha will be really proud of me. I am staying true to form.
The first time, I couldn’t stand her and we stayed that way a good three months, and she couldn’t stand me. Then, when we could actually handle being in the same room, we realized we actually were a lot alike. That is probably why we hated one another. As much as I saw Sasha’s strengths, she also opened up a lot to me with her weaknesses. That was probably the greatest part of her because of the fact that she was so strong and so brilliant and beautiful and also so frail and so young.
I just remember one night we were sitting outside out of somebody’s dorm room out on the side part where you can sit on the ledge. We were letting our legs hang and were just talking about what not, and we were saying how we knew we would be the type of friends who wouldn’t necessarily keep in contact, but that we knew we would be friends forever. We didn’t make it that far.
…It is always terrible when someone dies. But it is especially terrible when they are so brilliant and so wonderful and so ambitious. There was so much she still had to give to this world…I will miss her, but more importantly, the world should miss her because she had to much to go this young.