The memorial board

Lileks has a post up on his high school reunion. I skipped number 5 and number 10; I suspect that I'll skip some more before I finally go to one. One day I will, though, and I already dread looking at the memorial board honoring the classmates that have passed away. Lileks tells his story of the memorial for the dead at his reunion, and I found this part of the story very familiar:

Then you see the face that makes your knees go fluid.

Her?

It wasn’t that you knew her well, even though you’d been in school together since tot-hood. Perhaps you had a sneaky crush on her, like the rest of the nerds. She was smart, killer smart; she was pretty, achingly pretty, but she carried herself in a way that deflected your attention. She hunched, as though she was trying to draw in her beauty and keep it from spilling out, making a mess. Everything about her seemed an improvised defense. Her smile could melt coal. She died.

When I finally go to a reunion, that is the face that I really don't want to see in the memorial, and I know it is going to be there. When you graduate, you know that for some people, the best years of their entire life have just come to a conclusion. For others, you know that the best days of their lives are still on the horizon. She was one of those people. She wasn't part of any of the popular cliques, but she had tons of friends, was sharp as a tack, pretty, and was just generally great to be around. My mother only met her in passing and I believe that mom secretly wanted me to date her from that day forward (we were never that close of friends for it to be a possibility). Then on a Sunday morning one month after graduation, she died in a terrible country car accident. Even though we ran in different circles, the news was like a punch in the heart. People like her deserved a good, long life, and she wasn't going to have hers. Her legacy would live on when her parents donated her organs, saving the lives of countless others through the loss of her own. I still have a sadness for her, her friends, her family, and the family she would never have.