I don’t know how many friends it is normal to have lost by 20 years old. Yesterday, I found out that a former classmate and teammate  from Farmington passed away. It is nothing less than tragic. Although a few grades below me, she was a force to be reckoned with and everybody benefited from knowing her. She picked up shot put her first year and beasted everyone right off the bat. If I had been a thrower on another team I would have probably quit – she was that good. It, along with being a straight A student, earned her a full scholarship to college. This was her freshman year. She was only 18.

She didn’t die from texting while driving or making any other poor judgement call. She’s gone, and there is no ‘good’ (if there is such a thing) reason.

I am certain that she would have been a star.

What is so frustrating and confusing is that this isn’t one incidence.  Miss Porter’s, my high school of less than 400 students, has lost at least five students since I entered as a freshman in 2006. In all that time I haven’t been to a single memorial service or funeral. That’s one of the side effects of boarding school. When things happen, unless you are physically on campus, there is no real way to mourn as a community. You are spread all over the world, each trying to deal with an intensely upsetting situation without the support to really mentally handle it.

Most traumatic for me was the senseless and random murder of a student  in the summer of 2007. She had just graduated that spring. I found out about it from the cover of People magazine at a gas station.

None of this will ever make sense. There is no way to make sense of  death whether it be cancer, murder, or unexplained. It is even harder when those who pass away are young women just hitting their stride in life.

But yet we try.

So, when I opened up Facebook yesterday and saw a dozen statuses saying “RIP” and “She will be missed”, what really struck me was how every single one had some variation of “Thinking of Porter’s” or “Farmington’s our home”. Girls who graduated long before this student arrived were sending love and condolences to the community as a whole because we, as a community, have had to learn to grieve no matter the physical location of each member.  When something happens, we are there.

My love goes out to every person who knew Cherraine and my condolences go out to those who did not have the honor of getting to before she passed. Life is short and moments like this remind me that it all too often ends too soon.

Remember to live boldly, love wildly, and think freely. We only get one go at it, make it one to remember.