Handprints

So. Spring Break is over and done with. It was actually pretty amazing. I went out of town to stay with my friend, Megan, for four days (Wednesday-Saturday). We had an absolute blast. It was when I got home that things went a little downhill.

First of all, my dad's friend Muff died. He was only fifty-one. He died on Wednesday, after battling liver failure for a while. His kidneys finally shut down on Monday, and he went into a coma. My dad took it pretty hard.

And then, on Saturday after my parents got home from Muff's funeral, my mom handed me the newspaper and pointed to an article and said to me, "Did you know this girl?" Turns out a girl I knew from school, Amanda, died in an RV accident along with her older sister Alexis while they were coming home from their spring break. I couldn't believe it. I'd seen her the Friday before Spring Break, the last school day she would ever see, in our Peer Leaders class.

She made a poster with her friend Sarah for our school's tobacco-free campain. I just sat there on the floor with them and watched, having nothing better to do. Amanda was tracing her hands on the poster, adding some random creativity. Soon, it was covered with her handprints.

And now, she's gone. It's really weird, remembering so clearly the last time I saw her, and knowing that that will really be the last time. I never really knew her that well at all, since I was just starting to get to know her, but it's still sad. She was such a happy, nice person.

Then, today was our first day of Peer Leaders since spring break. It was really weird, Amanda not being there. But we dedicated the entire class period to making cards to give with her family. We're going to get a bunch of people to sign them at lunch next A-day.

And then, a few of us had an amazing idea. The poster Amanda had helped make on Friday was still hanging up in the hall. We could take it down, cut out all of her handprints, laminate them, and give them to her family. Those hand traces were so recent, it'd probably be really special for her family to have them. So that's what we did. We even saved her handwriting from the poster, and we're going to tape it onto a new posterboard and hang it back up in the halls.

Our class might plant a tree for Amanda, too. I think that'd be really cool, wouldn't it?

So, yeah. :)