I wish I could believe that the essence of Alice was still out there among the stars in some new form of being, but I must confess that I am a pretty devout agnostic, and I’m fairly sure Alice was as well. Many of you reading this may feel differently, and I envy you for it, but I can’t manage feeling anything but that our lives are ephemeral manifestations of our bodies, and when that fades, we are left with only the footprints of our lives as they crossed with others.
Still, she left some pretty big footprints for such a small woman, and they are an indelible path through my own life. She was my hero in so many ways, always looking on the bright side of things, not in a forced cheerfulness kind of way, but with an acceptance I have never quite managed. When her car burst info a towering 2 story high inferno, her reaction wasn’t rage or despair, but rather to get photo documentation to capture the amazing flames to share the excitement of the moment it all burned away. (*if anyone has the email/photos she sent when this happened, I’d love if you could forward them to me).
I wish I had more of that in me.
Still, it is somehow comforting to know that if by some strange quirk of fate we’re both wrong, I just know she’d be thinking “what a wonderful new adventure!”