It's time to talk about Amy. I just received an email from Ashley, her twin sister. It reminded me that I have neglected to talk about someone who was so very special to me and to honor her in the way in which she deseved to be honored.
Amy was on my drill team for two years at Tarkington High School. She graduated this year and she and her twin sister ran to me before anyone else. I remember being so happy and touched that they would want to share such a special achievement with me. I knew the both of them and how hard they had worked to get through high school. I taugh the underachievers who couldn't be bothered to apply themselves. These two girls were nothing of the kind. They worked harder than any of the students I had. Amy was a light. She was the girl everyone on the team was friends with. The one everyone went to because they knew she was the voice of comfort. I watched Amy go through hardship after hardship and I watched her come out stronger and more beautiful after every one. She received the smile award at dance camp because she ALWAYS had a smile. She was absolutely precious. I remember being so proud of her when she walked across that stage with that beautiful smile. I had written her a note as I did all my senior girls. I was blessed because we do not always have the opportunity to tell the ones we love how we really feel about them. I told Amy how proud I was of her and I told her that I knew she was going to go away to college and do wonderfully in that note. Its always the ones we "least expect", or the ones who "didn't deserve it" that leave us so early. Monday evening after the weekend of graduation I was checking my message that I had allowed to pile up in an effort to wind down from the last week of school. One of them was from a former student. It said Amy and Ashley had been in a bad accident. Ashley was ok, but Amy wasn't wearing her seatbelt and she was in critical condition. To make a long hard story short she fought with all of her heart for two solid weeks. We even lost her once. I remember my girls calling me and being so upset. I just kept reassuring them that Amy was going to be fine. Because really I believed it. I didn't have a bad feeling about it and I had faith that my Amy would be ok. However, Amy had greater things to accomplish looking after all of us elsewhere than she had left to do on Earth. I keep her name card from her graduation invitation on my rearview mirror and have since I learned of her accident. The funeral and the viewing were hard on the girls. Most of them had never seen a dead body and all of them had special memories with Amy. The hardest part for me was seeing her twin sister. Ashley seemed so grown up in such a short time. She came to me and told me they put her purse in the casket with her and that when she was looking through it she found the note I had written her. I pretty much lost it then. What do you say about death? It affects us all quite differently. I told her mom was a blessing she was to all of us. She was so badly broken and swollen that it didn't even look like her in the coffin. Amy I will always be so proud of everything you accomplished in your beautiful 19 years with us. I love you and miss you dearly.
