i first met amy shewbart when i was a sophomore in high school. it was either 1989 or 1990 ( i can't remember the month) and her name was amy walker at the time. a guy i knew was having a house party while his parents were away and i was going with a few of my friends. one of my buddies, a guy named ben, kept going on and on in the hours leading up to the party about how excited he was that this freshman girl amy was going to be there. i think they shared a class or something and he was totally smitten.
she showed up after we did (we weren't cool enough to arrive fashionably late) and she was every bit as attractive as he'd said, although i'm sure rather than "attractive" he said "fuckin' hot", but that's neither here nor there. she, being the prettiest girl at the party, quickly became the target audience of all of our antics, and we spent the next few hours trying to woo her with our wit and charm. since she was a freshman and we were worldy sophomores, we assumed that she would be impressed and would melt like butter in our wily hands.
well amy was having none of it. not to say that she was rude though, because she wasn't in the least; she talked to us and laughed at the times where something funny was actually said, but she didn't giggle and carry on like most freshman girls did. she was totally self confident and seemed like she didn't really care if we liked her or not, which was completely the opposite of most 15 year-old girls. i guess because she didn't do those things, i was a bit insulted and told ben at the end of the night that i didn't see what all the fuss was about.
well i was obviously an idiot. amy started dating a friend of mine named jason about a year later and as i got to know her, i quickly discovered what ben had seen. she did have the self confidence that i had noticed, but it no longer insulted me, rather it made me like her even more. she wasn't interested in impressing people, but did so anyway without even trying. in our group of friends, she was pretty much the only girl and i think all of us had a little crush on her at one time or another.
we all moved on to college; jason and i had pretty much every class together for four years and he continued to date amy. we always hung out at amy's house, which was down the street from my mom's house. over the four years of college, there were countless trips to a friend's lakehouse, nights of going out to eat (for such a thin girl, amy LOVED to eat), tons of drinking, and just general hanging out. one particular summer, i was working nights and didn't have any summer classes during the day, so amy came over a few times a week to lay out by the pool with me. we mostly talked about trivial stuff, but sometimes Big Issues would come up - issues like The Future, and Getting Married, and Having Babies. she knew that she and jason were going to have all those things and you could just tell that the world of possibilities excited her.
just after college, my girlfriend of three years broke up with me and it was amy that i mostly talked to as a sympathetic ear. amy was a great listener and would always put things in perspective. pretty much all of us went to amy when we needed an ear or a sympathetic voice.
she and jason got married on the beach in maui in june of 1999 and i was fortunate enough to attend. of course amy looked gorgeous and it was one of the best vacations i ever took.
we all got jobs after college and eventually i moved about an hour away from jason and amy. jason served as a groomsman in my wedding and we probably saw them four or five times a year, but always stayed in touch via email or the phone. my wife had our baby in march of 2004 and amy gave birth to a little boy named zachary in july of that same year. we met zachary in person for the first time just three months ago when everyone came out to our house for a get-together. amy loved being a mother and it suited her perfectly. her face absolutely glowed when she held zachary or even when she talked about him. our boys played together, along with another friend's daughter and then all the grown-ups got drunk once the kids went to sleep. when everyone left around midnight, there were hugs like normal and promises to "do this again soon".
but then amy shewbart died on april 15, 2005.
i can't even tell you how strange and heartbreaking it is to me to have just typed that sentence. after i wrote it, i sat here and stared at it for a few minutes and even though it has been three weeks, i'm still not believing it 100%. she and jason had spent the first part of that morning playing in the bed with zachary, who is nine months old. amy then got up to get ready for work. after her shower, she collapsed and died suddenly from what was determined to be a heart attack that was magnified by a prolapsed mitral valve and an irregular heartbeat (conditions which she knew she had). i was a pallbearer at the funeral on tuesday the 19th and amy was buried wearing a hawaiian shirt. all the pallbearers wore them as well, along with leis.
**edited to add that no autopsy was done, much to the frustration of the family. they now believe it was a ruptured brain aneurysm that killed amy.
over the fifteen or sixteen years i knew amy, i was constantly seeing new ways in which she was incredible. it was impossible to not have fun with her. it was also impossible to feel down or upset in her presence. she had this sort of magnetism that made you want to be around her and be a part of whatever she was doing. every time i hung out with her, i walked away from it feeling a little bit better about myself, simply by virtue of the fact that she considered me a friend. fuck raymond, everybody loved amy.
i know a lot of "cool chicks" - girls that can hang out with the boys and fit in. considering my particular group of friends, that is saying something, but i know a lot of them. i also know a few great ladies - women that you admire for their character and the way they live their lives. but i can probably count on one hand the women i know that are both - and amy certainly was. she was the coolest chick that you also looked up to.
i'm going to miss amy terribly. when i found out about her death, i felt like i was going to be sick right there on the phone. it was all i could think about for every waking hour. i have no idea how i got anything done that week. i'm still thinking about her a large portion of most days, and if i concentrate, i can still hear her voice in my head, admonishing me for taking the lord's name in vain, or extolling the virtues of ice cream, or asking for more wine. thinking about not hearing that voice or seeing her eyes light up when she smiles makes me so sad that i can't even think straight.
but rather than take time to think back and be sad, i'm going to do my best to be thankful that i got to know her as long as i did and that we were a part in each other's lives.
things are going to be difficult for my friend jason, but he's a strong man (amy wouldn't have been with him otherwise) and he'll manage. all of us are there for him, and will continue to be for as long as he'll have us. little zachary won't ever get to know just how warm & loving his mom was, but in about twenty years (or probably less), i'm going to take that kid out for a beer and try to do my best to explain it.
i love you amy. and i'll miss you.
ps. jason reads this site. if you knew amy or if you didn't know amy but you feel like it, leave a comment for him here. there is also a photo album of her on this site. thanks to jason for getting the pictures to me.