In all of the excitement over the weekend I never took the chance to mention one of the oddest conversations I have ever had in my entire life. It took place at Jed and Vian's as we celebrated Vian's birfday with their friends Friday night - the same party we were going to when Jooj exclaimed "Oh my Gawd, that's Kelsey!!!"
We arrived and, to no surprise of my own, did not know anyone besides our kind hosts. We grabbed some drinks and sat down. Another couple sat down and engaged in conversation. They were very nice and the conversation subject was very light - what you would expect at a party of loose acquaintances.
After a short while a woman pulled up her chair an introduced herself. She asked me what I did for a living and I told her that I was Java programmer by day and an artist by night. "I pegged you as an artist," she responded. I'm not sure if she found the connection in me being an artist or if I just have that warm, welcoming smile that begs for others to entrust their secrets in me. But the next 40 minutes took me down a series of conversation paths that I never could have expected.
This woman's daughter, Annemarie, was also an artist. She had created over 400 pieces during her short career - drawings and paintings and sculpture. She had also posed nude as a means of making some cash on the side, much to her mother's chagrin. She was a graduate of Murray State and worked in a consignment shop selling vintage clothing in Tennessee after graduating. Annemarie was simply full of life and was most definitely the apple in her mother's eye.
In May of 2006, while visiting some friends in Florida and swimming in a fresh water spring, Annemarie was attacked and killed by an alligator at the age of 23.
I'm going to give that sentence its own paragraph just to let it sink in. How horrific? I can't even begin to imagine. What do you say to someone who says that to you? I did my best to lend a sympathetic ear as she spun story after story. She told me of the silly things people said to her at Annemarie's wake, of that fact that she never saw her daughter due to their inability to put her back together, of the petty consignment shop owner who wanted "that black dress" back, of the "visits" Annemarie made to friends after her passing, of how no one could tell her what Annemarie was wearing when she was cremated, of the premonitions Annemarie had of her own death and even the nature of her demise only weeks before it happened, of the support groups for parents who have lost their children that she still attends and constantly overwhelms with her story of loss.
I just did a little digging and found the story: Alligator Kills Woman
Well, gawddam, if it didn't happen in Ocala. I hate Ocala.
92.1% | 174.53 lbs. (174.0 lbs.) | 16% (8 of 50) | 75.62% (276 of 365) | 102/55 lbs.
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2 comments:
I went to school with that woman, Dawn, at U of L worked with her at the Cardinal newspaper, very bright. I came across story two years ago, awful, awful. Small world and dangerous
Dawn Marie, yep. It was such a sad story. What can a person say to a story like that? Nothing - nothing at all. All I could do was listen.
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