Jessie

This is a short excerpt from what was originally a much longer blog (4/11/05). I'm not terribly trusting of my own words right now... so if this doesn't completely make sense, forgive me:

Today, THIS is where time stopped. There was really no mincing of words in the email. In fact, it was so plainly written that I had to read it three times to be sure I understood what I was reading. Our close family friends lost their daughter in a car accident in Australia on Sunday morning. On the other side of the world. From them. Jessie was 20.

I saw Jessie very briefly this summer and talked with her a little about Australia. How great it would be, how much fun she was going to have, the cool places she should go. Then, Jessie went back into town, and I talked with her mom about it for awhile longer. Like my mom, you can literally see Lynn beaming when she talks about her daughters. It's beautiful.

I would guess I've known Jessie, and her entire family, since she was about 4. I can remember the first time I met her. She was running up and down the beach with her hair in tangles. It seemed to always be in tangles. :-) And Jessie always seemed to be laughing like crazy, grinning a big smile with missing teeth. I remember a red bathing suit. I think in my mind I've probably morphed together a few years of memory as I'm thinking about this bundle of energy and silliness. Mostly I just remember her giggling. When I think about her I feel her happiness. It's an overwhelming feeling thats coming to me. For now, it's all I can really put my finger on. Before I ran into her on the beach this summer, it must've been two, maybe three years since I last saw her. When I saw her again this summer, it took a few minutes to register that this grown up, beautiful smiling young woman was the same girl that I still remember as the crazy laughing smiling 4 yr old that I met all those years ago.

As I think more about it, there are few, if any, other people in my memory, young or old, that have left an indelible impression of such unbridled happiness in my mind. Jessie seemed to possess a rare, enviable happiness that just emanates and spreads to everyone around. It's like an aura I guess, but stronger. Much stronger.

And it's stuck with me... All the times I saw her over all the years as she and her sisters were growing up, and me and my sisters were growing up, it is still Jessie with the tangled hair, running around the beach, laughing and smiling. Bringing light and happiness to everyone around her. Maybe the reason that memory sticks is because no matter how much she grew up and accomplished, at her core, that was still the person that radiated through in every encounter. A beautiful, happy, laughing tangled hair angel.