Pink Tutus

When I think of her, I always think of sunshine and pink ballet tutus. We were brief friends in that way little girls are in the fifth grade, until another girl came along and they drifted off together and I ingratiated myself into a gaggle of girls for the rest of the school year. Looking back from my place in the future, with a family of my own now and two little girls with pony tails and dance recitals and pajama parties, I wonder where the pink tutu would've landed her in this life.

I saw the letter of memorial in the local paper while drinking my coffee in the quiet hour before the troops begin invading and storming down the stairs. It's been twenty five years since she died. I'm thrust back to those sunshine years of innocence and play and how all of that was shattered on that April morning when pink came to mean the cutting down of life, when tutus came to symbolize broken bones and shattered lives and weeping over a dead little girl. Her parents seemed to vanish with her afterwards, they stopped watering their lawn and they no longer came to school functions; no need anymore. Then one day, a moving van pulled up to their house on the block and gathered all their beds and sofas and drove away for good.

We all went back to school sad and somber but, then the excitement of the end of the school year took over and we forgot. We were all in a state of girlhood hysteria in anticipation of all the sleepovers and parties and play. No more hours stuck in a classroom, no more homework, only endless hours to suntan in the backyard drinking fizzy cokes and thumbing through magazines, heaven for fifth graders. The dead little girl and her disappearing family were long forgotten and summer vacation was all any of us could think about.

Summer vacations were replaced with college graduations and then marriages and babies and looking back is not an option for the living and she became buried in the past as some part of a disappearing landscape. She was long gone when the memorial appeared but, not forgotten by a precious few. Ironically, the reminder of her death is serving to remind me of my own life and how glorious it has been and filled with such living things like a home and a family and a lush garden and accomplishments and a cup of coffee before the barrage of life and love comes barreling into my arms after a sticky sleep.

How sad. It seems futile to print a reminder to the rest of us who have lived on and forgotten. It seems to be a desperate act after all these years to let us all know, they haven't forgotten or moved very far from that terrible ending to her sweet life; death makes us all desperate I suppose. I wouldn't know. Her death didn't last a lifetime for me but, it goes on for her family who continue to mourn her long after we all came gleefully rushing out of those school doors into the blinding sun with arms wide open embracing the tomorrows that awaited each of us.

I imagine her flying up to heaven before the car broke all her bones and tore her tutu from her tiny little waist and turned it from pink to crimson. She had a smile that lit up like the sunshine on that day that washed the sidewalk with grief and took us all apart and spun us into an unknown pirouette. In my minds eye, I see her burst through the clouds into the brilliant light of her own unfolding being and she lives on in the hearts of those few who loved her and refuse to forget. She loved to dance and she loved to wear pink and she lived among us and then she lived beyond us.