Candles

It may not have the most depressing sight I’ve ever seen, but it was close. Top five, probably. Definitely top ten.

There were candles. Candles and flowers and candles and spray-painted words of affection scrawled on the plywood boards holding the building together like a stripper’s flimsy bathrobe…and candles.

I think I remember the candles most for several reasons, the main of which was, to the person speaking, just a passing comment. My friend, a firefighter through and through, remarked that we should go extinguish them since they were a fire hazard.

A fire hazard. Really.

The girl’s dead; the least we can do is risk a little blaze in her honor and, to be honest, burning the whole building down might be for the best. But it’s not like he was wrong…he was quite right, and somehow that made it worse. The man had a point and he knew that.

After all, only you can prevent forest fires. And other fires too, when it comes down to it.

I guess I shouldn’t actually have been too shaken by this…after all, I only sort of knew her and more than sort of thought she was an airhead. Should my opinion of her change just because she died young, died violently? If it does change, if what I’ve come to think of as the “saint overnight” effect does actually change my mind about her, what does that say about me? That I can’t hang on to my convictions…or that I’ve found some shred of compassion in my soul for the girl? I don’t claim to have the answer to that, but I don’t think it would be compassion. I think it would be some sort of self-centered dishonesty, trying to assuage my conscience by believing I had, all along, thought she was amazing and the joy of my life…

…instead of what she really was: a girl in my French class who couldn’t have red dye #40 without bouncing off the walls (which happened quite frequently) who later made a stupid mistake and, consequently, got her car wedged under a semi truck halfway through that abandoned building.

It would be, well, irrelevant to speculate on why she died and her, to all appearances, much-less-worthy boyfriend lived. I’m not going to discuss that particular brand of mortality. Sometimes, when you know even the right answer will be wrong, it’s best not to ask the question, at least not out loud.

She probably died instantly, as soon as the truck hit her car. The whiplash broke her neck, I heard. Nothing ever even touched her and her face was perfectly calm and still beautiful by popular definition. There might have been a scratch or two from the glass, but she certainly never felt it.

How pristine. Broken in a bubble. Very…fitting.

I suppose I’m the kind of morbid person who would dwell on the image of her perfect face cradled in the wreckage, but there is a certain beautiful irony in a death like that. Especially for her: the bubbly ballerina in Abercrombie & Fitch.

When I left work that night, I sat in my car in the darkened parking lot, watching all the candles flicker in my rearview mirror. I felt like I wanted to put something over there with all the candles and flowers. I thought about driving to the grocery store and buying an eight pack of Hi-C fruit punch and setting one on that cold, crowded sidewalk. I don’t know what I’d do with the rest. I hate fruit punch, but it’s all I really remembered about her. That and she couldn’t pronounce French to save her life. So to speak.

What would be the point anyway? Honestly, what was I trying to prove- that I was part of the whole? Or was it just some sick desire for an emotional response, regardless of what response it was? I’ve always been the type, metaphorically speaking, to pick at a wound just to feel the pain, analyze it, know that it’s there. Wouldn’t this just be the same thing, feeling all the tiny, hot candle wicks beside my hands and scanning the ground for the tire marks, glass, blood…anything to make it seem real? So I just sat in my car with my pitiful offering: a length of peach-colored ribbon twisted into a floppy bow. It was all I had to give and still I was hesitant. I didn’t want some genuine mourner coming along and seeing my lack of grief and abundance of skepticism. There’s no room for self-consciousness at a road-side shrine such as the one developing there, so I kept my stupid-looking bow in my chapped fingers.

Anyways, you never know when you might need a piece of ribbon.

So my selfishness and I drove home together, humming distractedly along with the radio.

The next day, Walmart’s sales of black eyeliner probably skyrocketed. Never mind that it could’ve been Walmart’s arrival that killed her. Maybe that semi wouldn’t have even been traveling that route if Walmart hadn’t come in. Except that it was a gas tanker…but when playing the scapegoat game, everyone’s eligible. Even me. If I had been her friend when I had the opportunity back in fifth grade French class or even tenth grade Honors English when she was in my group for that Norse mythology project, then she might not have decided to get ice cream at Kwik Fill that night and she wouldn’t have gotten impatient in the turning lane and she wouldn’t have jerked out in front of that semi at the precisely wrong moment…and then she wouldn’t be dead. She’d be going to school for nursing to save other people’s lives…more consequences, more ever-expanding ripples in the pool of human interaction.

Kwik Fill.

That tidbit is important.

If you know anything about gas stations, you know that they have huge tanks underground that hold the gasoline. You probably also know that gas is extremely flammable.

These things are all important.

Because when the semi hit her car, they both went off the road and plowed across grass and driveways until finally coming to rest in the abandoned movie store. However, they just barely missed Kwik Fill’s gas pumps, almost caused an explosion in the underground tanks, and very nearly harmed people I care about a lot.

I know it’s selfish of me, but I can’t seem to help it. The fact that it could’ve touched me more than it did makes me feel a little like I’ve swallowed lead.

I’ve always sort of wondered something. If someone I know and care about dies or is at least hurt, is there any way I could sense it? Maybe that sounds completely crazy, but if a part of myself is in someone and that person is lost, haven’t I lost a part of myself? Shouldn’t I be able to feel that shard of my spirit go with them? Because I don’t think I can get it back…

I was contemplating this very thing the other day in a completely different context. There is, after all, more than one way to lose someone. Even though I was distracted by these somewhat somber thoughts, I noticed that those flimsy plywood boards on the old Movie Gallery had been opened and there were two cars in the parking lot. Clearly they’re thinking about rebuilding, re-renting, re-opening.

And so it goes.

In time, the posthumous prom queen will fade from our minds and we’ll forget how her tanned skin looked against the dark purple of her Tiffany prom dress and I’ll be able to focus on just renting movies when I go past the old Movie Gallery and then life will be back to as normal as it ever could be…

…but there will still be a family that’s lost a daughter, a boyfriend who’s lost a girlfriend, and friends who can no longer listen to “Stairway to Heaven” because all they’ll see is her almost suspiciously slim frame swaying to the melody.

And it’s this that strikes me the most. We all have holes caused by the pain, but God knows it shouldn’t be so hard.

And so what should we do but this? This writing, purging, purifying done simply to try, not to make sense, but to remember and wonder at the pain and the wonderful paradox of beauty and misery and truth and questions and blonde-haired, blue-eyed, saint-overnight, posthumous prom queens that might not have been very nice to us but we’re willing to remember them at their best even if it’s not who they really were. And all the trite sayings in the world won’t make it better, and sincerity probably won’t either, but all that can be hoped for is to reach out and feel a hand on the other side of a questioning touch…and that is what makes up hope. Knowing and loving and being everything that you are and still being able to live.