Marisa

It's been four years since Marisa's accident.  Sometimes it seems like it was even longer than that, a lifetime.  Sometimes it feels as fresh as a moment ago.

I have the occasional dream about her.  Something will step out at me in my day-to-day life.  The checkout girl at Target.  The girl I met yesterday in my Institute class.  (Although she spells hers with two "s"s.  I mentioned that I had a friend named Marisa, but I didn't have the heart to tell her more than that, or that she was spelling her name wrong.)

I see all the different ways people keep her in their memory and I have regrets now and then.  I should have gotten to know her better.  Should be thinking of her more often now.  But then I wonder what would have happened if positions were reversed.  What if it wasn't Marisa that we lost, but someone else?  What would she do to commemorate a friend's passing?  What if (as morbid and maybe a little selfish as this may seem) it had been me?  What would my funeral have been like?  And what would people be saying or thinking four years later?