This is NOT a story about somebody who died in high school.

The girl in the picture went to my high school. I didn't think I knew her all that well (she was popular, I wasn't), but we did a group project in speech class once, and I went to her house. I recall one of the other kids in the project brought a can of warm beer under his jacket, and while her bedroom door was closed it was passed around...except to me, because I was afraid of beer. From this project I recall learning that she was an only child like me. She also said that over the summer instead of going to the beach she would pick a subject and spend the summer at the library studying it, which wasn't what I expected from the girl about whom most people just said, "She's hot!"

After that project we would say "hello" when we saw each other. She also went to the same local college as me. One of the last times I recall seeing her she had cut her hair and had started wearing a chain around her neck, a punk style which surprised everyone. I recall saying, "Did you wreck your 10 speed? You have a bicycle chain around your neck."

Fast forward 15 years to December 2008. We both joined Facebook around the same time. I was surprised to get a Friend request from her, and to see I was one of her first five friends, because as I say, she was popular and I wasn't.

Her favorite quote seemed a little eerie: "Death is the Mother of Beauty - Wallace Stevens."

She wrote on my Facebook "wall" January 16th, after I posted that I had just bought a Neil Young album:

Hey Art ! Good to know about old Neil - I just added a meaningful clip (to me) of him on my page. I hope you are well. I'm so glad we have started to re-connect.

I thought I should write something back, but I didn't get the chance. Tuesday night I signed onto Facebook to find another friend saying, "I'm sad to hear about Ashli. She was a good and decent person." Was she talking about the same Ashli? I looked further, and the status on Ashli's page said, "Ashli was killed in a car wreck last night. Please keep her and her family in your prayers."

Though as I say I didn't know her all that well, this news has really rocked me back on my heels. Our high school was reputed to have had more auto deaths than any other school in the metro Atlanta area. Usually I was somewhat numb to the deaths. You would usually hear the people were either drunk and/or driving like maniacs, so their demise was no surprise. But here we're talking about a 36 year old woman with a husband and a little boy, who had made the effort to say "hello" to me just a little over a week earlier. Whew...

I drove the stretch of highway where a report said this happened a couple of times last night to see if I could envision how it could happen. I don't see it, although I've been in five wrecks in my lifetime and two of them were around this same spot -- where other people ran into me. Unless you were going 55+ and the road was wet, I don't see how you could flip there. Maybe with a SUV's high center of gravity?

It's made me realize how true the chorus of the Stuck Mojo song is: "You're not promised tomorrow / So live for today!"

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