The cell phone cut through early morning torpor, a welcome connection at any time.  My friend Sue checking in;  odd, usually it would be me calling her on the way to school.  I was baffled but delighted when she handed the phone to another former colleague and then to the high school custodian.  Bless my soul, MaryBeth and Penny.  What a treat.  It wasn't until I had asked Sue what prompted her to call that I heard her shrug and reluctantly add, "I thought it would help," that I realized she was calling purposefully on August 26.  The sledgehammer hit the house of cards and I wept the rest of  the way to school.  What a blessing, the embrace of friends!

Twelve years ago the 26th was a Tuesday, a week into Sarah's senior year, sharing a locker with little freshman sister Emily, finding the energy to get through senior English, government, and the Advanced Speech performance before driving to Dad's for the evening.  It was my freshman English students watching her performance of House of Blue Leaves, boys in the habit of scorning holding their collective breath in hushed admiration.  It was Sarah's after school hug and last request, "Are you sure it's all right to go to Dad's?"  I still writhe when my snapped reply whips through my memory.  Why couldn't I have reflected on the reason behind her question?  Asked why she shouldn't?  Could I have wheedled the confession out of her, the late night of William Carlos Williams and Emily Dickens in Spanish hidden from my bedtime rules?  Shouldn't I have known and offered to drive her?  This film runs on continuous loop once it starts and always ends with the sleepy girl drooping, the little car sliding left, the truck tractor trailer, the broken metal, the severed spine.

 Twelve years ago the sheriff's car came to my door to announce the amputation of my magical child's life from ours, to bring her brother and sister home from universities, to traumatize her classmates.

This year I seek the daily news article from Le Monde for my French classes to read and discover the death of Ted Kennedy in the French headlines, "symbol of an America open to the world."  Sarah was open to the world, I think.  He was 77, she 17.  Life flings such ironies in our faces!   I remember Princess Diana dying the day we buried Sarah and Mother Theresa later that week. 

In the 6th grade, we read about the Eiffel Tower and the Statue of Liberty, discussion quickly degenerating into "when I was in Paris" anecdotes by eager children who may or may  not have noticed that instead of my usual waltz around the room I am draped over the podium, clinging to support.  I have to jump up to tell them the story of Sarah's first glimpse of the tower, coming from the métro behind it, and her extraordinary knee-buckling terror at its size.  Emily and I laughed pitilessly at her shock.  "Well, all I've ever seen is the tower on Mom's desk!"  was Sarah's only defense.  It helps to laugh, to act, to watch children appreciate the humor of the moment.  It keeps the moment alive.

After school I held the call-out meeting for Speech Team.  Sarah joined debate and speech as a freshman, earning immediate honors and as a junior qualifying for the national tournament.  When her coach left the year after her death, no one wanted the job.  In the end, I took it, to keep her team from dying.  It felt like something I could learn to do.  After five years, a senior champion made it to nationals.  And then I moved home to be close to my parents.  There was no speech team in this middle school, but there was a high school team and a team at the other middle school, so I started a team here.  First year, three speakers.  Second year, a dozen.  Yesterday there were 60 students in my room.  Sixty-one, if you count Sarah.  She was there as clearly as I was there, in jeans and a green plaid shirt, giggling with Missy, sparkling, all curls and freckles and joy.

During the day there was an email from my cousin, journaling her week at her father's bedside, far from my embrace, in a Seattle hospital.  She wrote about death, about living.  She radiated the active verb that is loving.

Last Sunday the Mass included a hymn I'd never heard.  It's refrain reached out and choked me, strangling me with the oncoming anguish of this week:  "All I ask of you is forever to remember me as loving you."    I remember you loving me, Sarah.  I remember your milky way birthmark soft on the line of your jaw, the frizz of hair framing your face, the glow of your joie de vivre, the updraft of your laughter, the snort that came just before, and the brilliant insight into me and all who came into the laser beam of your perception.

Your legacy was a body of writing that would make an octogenarian proud.  I vow to bring it back to life, to find a publisher for your stories, and to pick up your will and your craft to plunge back into my novel, my poetry, my stories. 

It has been a long voyage on a wintry sea, much of it rudderless and simply nose above the waterline.  I vow, Sarah, to crawl back to the rudder, sheet in the main, to take control of the craft and to sail hard for the lee shore.  I feel your breath by me and know that you live in me. 

We love you.  We remember you.