I don’t remember exactly when, some time between 2003 and 2005, I came home from college. My older aunt called me and told me that Lita, my younger aunt’s best friend, had died. I was quiet for a moment, and then I said, “Okay.” She asked me if I was all right, and I told her yes. We hung up, and I think I might have taken a second for myself, and then I went about whatever my business was at the time. Lunch, maybe. I didn’t cry. I didn’t even grieve, thinking back. She died, I found out, and life went on.

It’s not that I didn’t like Lita. Just the opposite. She was a constant fixture in my house growing up. My younger aunt is around nine years older than me, just old enough to want to tease me when I got old enough to be teased, and Lita was around the same age. She was familiar enough that it feels weird to type her full name. She was always Lita, and sometimes Lita Mae when my grandmom was around, I think. Like my uncle’s friends Tick and Charles (I called him Chuck when I was younger, I thought I was funny), she was sort of my friend, too. My cousin was closer to Lita, I think, because she was good friends with Lita’s younger brother and son. But she wasn’t a stranger.

Lita’s death was my introduction to death as an adult, and it bothers me that my reaction was numb or non-existent. I never talked to anyone about it, I never stayed up about it… I never felt anything. I feel more about not feeling anything than I do about her actual death.

Part of it is my memory. It’s not hard to picture her, but it is hard to remember her. She’s a collection of sounds and visuals that don’t quite coalesce. I remember her face and her smile. She laughed different than most people, not a giggle and not a guffaw. If I had to type it out, it’d have the first three letters of hyuk, but without the yokel associations. She laughed like it began down in her toes and rolled up until it reached her mouth, like a reverse avalanche. It was throaty, diaphragm-y.

She liked elephants. That was her thing. I’m not sure why, I don’t think I ever asked, but that was it. My mom sent me one of the elephants Lita gave her a few years ago, I think just because she was moving houses and had no space for it. I look at it sometimes and I think, “Oh, Lita liked elephants.”

She had a son. He was young when she died, though I guess he isn’t any more. He was young enough that I didn’t want to hang out with him when I was a kid, but in reality, I’m probably just ten or twelve years older than him, like my aunt’s just nine older than me. She had a couple brothers. Her mother is still around, I think. It’s sad.

I sometimes think about her and why I feel the way I do. It feels deficient, almost, like I’ve failed her. Like I owed her a classic grieving period for all the times we had, but I don’t remember them and therefore failed her. I don’t know what she liked to eat, listen to, or do. I remember watching one of those custom music video tapes her and my aunt did. It was corny and funny, but a time capsule. It was 1992 in a nutshell. That’s sort of how I see her, me being a pre-teen and her hanging out with my aunt. Frozen in that specific time, that memory.

I’m not sure why I wanted to write this. It felt like something I needed to say to someone, anyone. I wish I could remember her better.