Remembering Leanne

During the summer of 2001, we all watched the drama in the news about a young girl who was murdered by her stepfather and the community that was devastated by her sudden passing. It went on for weeks.

It wasn't until I got back to school that September that I learned that Leanne had sat behind me in Latin class for an entire semester. Our teacher was the most affected by her absence and one morning when we arrived the lights were all off and she had erected a small candlelit shrine in the centre of the room. We spent the next hour sitting in a circle, sharing our memories about her.

"I'd like to pass," I said when it was finally my turn. The teacher, being the wonderful and naïve person she was, assumed at once that I couldn't speak because I was upset and moved by the experience. The truth was that as I sat listening to everyone's thoughts, I stared at her smiling face through the candle flames, racking my brain for something to say. There was nothing there.

After class, my friends pulled me aside. "You remember her," they said, telling all sorts of stories, none of which sounded remotely familiar to me. That night I looked her up in the previous year's yearbook, and that didn't help either. The photo from the shrine soon found its way to the front centre of the classroom, and she stared at me every day I went to Latin until I graduated, asking why I didn't remember her. It was a question I couldn't answer and I felt terrible about it.

Today, on my way to dance from the bus loop, I stepped off the curb and into a large crowd crossing the street. Behind me someone was laughing and I had to stop in the island for a second take. It was Leanne's laugh, or close enough.

I had thought that I had forgotten her completely, but then I heard her laugh. And while a single laugh isn't really a substantial memory it's better than nothing at all. I'm happy that I at least have something.

But it still bothers me that she seemed so completely absent from my memory. If I couldn't remember a person that I saw every day for a year, then what other things am I forgetting that I just haven't noticed yet? I think I'm losing my mind.