For Christine

I’m working on a memoir, and I am recalling my junior high days. This photo is from my ninth grade yearbook at John C. Fremont Junior High in Roseburg. This is my friend Christine. Christine was the friendliest, funniest person I knew then. We never attained boyfriend/girlfriend status, but we probably could have if one of us would have mentioned it. At school dances, we danced together, and because of our height differences (Christine was short, and I was tall), to comedic effect. But we laughed about it. That was the beauty of Christine.

While she started her freshman year at Fremont, she moved with her family shortly after the beginning of the year. In December of that year, 1967, I was devastated to learn that she had been killed in a car accident. Hers was the first death of a friend and classmate, and it knocked me sideways. I think her memorial was a private family service, and I didn’t know until this week that she is interred in Roseburg. I will find her resting place soon, and pay her a visit.

Christine will get a chapter in my book, and I will include this poem I recently wrote for her.

For Christine

She was only 14 when she left us.
She took her flowing chestnut hair,
her sparkling, mischievous eyes,
her gleaming smile,
and entered a world that waits for us all.

I like to think of her now with the wren
singing in the back yard,
or with the great geese flights
to the north, hers a spirit force
out of the clouds,
her voice of earth and sky between.

These few words are for Christine.