For Picklestraw, Part 2

Now it's been 22 years since you died. More than 3 years longer than you were alive. More than 5 times as long as I knew you. And yet I still think of you on the anniversary of your death.

Granted, it had already been a hell of a bad year for me. I was working my way out of a deep depression and trying to work through so many things. Your death was the cherry on the "grow the hell up" sundae I'd been served that year. I realize I remember it so vividly not just because of you, but because of where I was back then.

Yet even though I am so far from the mental place, I still have these mental postcards of that week. Certain phone calls, conversations and images are like this weird mental scrapbook that I can look at whenever I want.

I don't want to very often. I would much rather imagine your reaction to something then to remember how much your death hurt so many people. I do the same thing with my grandmother - imagine her reaction, I mean. How she would have loved my kids. Stuff like that. With you, it's always been more complicated. And less okay.

Because I still - all these many years later - don't know what the hell you were doing that night. So I feel like anything I imagine is tainted by the fact that maybe I didn't know you at all. That's a hard thing for the 19 year old in my head to admit. She's a little dramatic, as you know.

I'm no longer sure of what happens when you die, either. But I hope that somehow you found peace and felt everyone's love.