for the past week or so, i've been sleeping until about noon. yesterday i woke up to my phone ringing. it was laney. she called to say that she was sorry that we didn't get to hang out before we left school. i said i was also sorry, that i missed her. i asked her how she was doing, and she said not so well. her twin sister got in a car accident on the highway a few days ago... they didn't have a positive ID on the body, but it was her car, and they pulled a female out of the car.
everything went numb. i said i'm so sorry and i cried. we cried together. while i'd only met leslie once, laney talked about her all the time. they were twins and best friends. when someone dies, it is the living that bear the burdon of the loss. i relized that i was crying not necessarily for leslie so much as laney. when she came into the DO she was shy and withdrawn. leyla and i took her under our wing and watched her grow as both a designer and a person. we became good friends. laney used to help me with my advertising concepts. i realized i was crying because i've always wanted to protect laney. i didn't want her to have to experience a world that wouldn't be as kind, patient and understanding as the environment we tried to foster in our design office. while i lost my nonnie earlier this year, i can't even begin to imagine what she's going through right now... i've fealt numb since yesterday.
i read about the accident online. traffic had slowed down on the highway, and a logging truck slammed into 8 vehicles. leslie's was the first to be hit. laney said she just hoped that she didn't see it coming, that she didnt' feel any pain. the article said the driver hit the cars because he wasn't paying attention. i wonder if he realized when he said that that he had blood on his hands. that because he wasn't paying attention, laney lost the one person that was more important to her than anyone else in the world. in one of the articles they quoted laney:
A woman reached at the Bentz home said Leslie Bentz was her twin sister. The family was not ready to talk about the accident yesterday, she said. "She was a wonderful sister, the best sister you would ever meet in your life," she said.
laney said you can't be a twin without two... but i'll always be a twin.
i want to hug her, and protect her. i don't want her to feel this kind of pain... no one should have to feel this kind of pain.
laney said she wanted me to know that she really looked up to me, and that she learned a lot from me. that she loved me and missed me. she said that she thought of me because you never know when something like this could happen and that you have to appreciate the people that you love every day. i instantly thought of leyla and jamie.
i called jamie first. i needed to hear her voice, to know that she was ok. something about experiencing this kind of event made me super aware of the people around me, the ones that are still in my life and the relationships that have faded away. i realized life is very fragile and death is very perminent.
i didn't know if i should call leyla, but i thought that she deserved to know and i didn't know if laney would call her. her voice seemed distant. i couldn't tell if she was apathetic or if she was just uncomfortable because i'd called. i said i don't know where you are or what you're doing, and i don't know if you want to go but there's a memorial service this week. she said i would like to go but i'm kinda on the opposite side of the country, and she kind of chuckled. i thought that was really strange, but i figured it was just because she was nervous. i didn't ask what she was doing or how she was doing, and neither did she. i said ok well i'm gonna go, and she said i'll talk to you soon...
i called jared. he agreed that we should send flowers and maybe set up some kind of memorial fund in leslie's name. he sent me an email with information about the services. at the end he said: I'm sorry for every mean thing I ever did or said to you. Know that I won't remember college for a split second without you.
one night at the DO laney slammed her mouse hand in one of the windows. i gave her some ice and a stale circus peanut to make her feel better. she told me later that she still has it. when i was cleaning my room out today i found a marshmallow virgin mary statue under my desk. i'm going to bring it for her, and i hope it will at least make her giggle.
meredith, amy and i are going to go to the services on wednesday. i hope that in being there, we can help laney get through this... i don't really know what else we can do besides be there for her. this isn't the kind of pain that goes away any time soon...
