Just because we cope and come to terms with the losses doesn't mean we miss them any less. My first roommate in college died in a freak accident less than two weeks after our sophomore year. I still miss her 23 years later, and wonder what she would have accomplished if she'd made it beyond the 20 short years she was alive.

When Laura arrived at college, she got stuck in the party dorm with a nice roommate, but not one she really wanted to live with. I liked my roommate fine, but she wanted to live in the party dorm. I wasn't really sure I wanted to take on this shy, homesick girl, but I knew how it felt to be so homesick you thought you were going to die, and agreed to the roommate swap. So glad I did. Once Laura got over her homesickness, she blossomed. She was the dorm practical joker, was game for any adventure that came up, and had a hidden talent as a skateboarder. She also slept with a knife under her pillow, never got the whole story on that one. We swapped cheesy romance novels and Louis L'Amour westerns, talked about cute boys we had crushes on late at night, and shared family traumas that we'd never told anyone else up to that point. I remember how excited she was to drive her beloved car, a bright yellow VW Bug back to campus the fall of our sophomore year and how made she got at the guy down the hall when he mummified it in toilet paper as revenge for one of her practical jokes. Greg was frequently the victim, mostly because he was an easy mark. I think that might have been the only time he ever came out on top of the practical joke wars.

I'll never forget the phone call from our friend Lenore, letting us all know she'd slipped on the rocks at the top of Ripogenus Gorge and fallen to her death 200 feet into the river below. I still take a few moments on her birthday, March 27th (six days after mine), to remember her.