Lisa

*just a fair warning: any comments asking how it happened, why it happened, etc will be removed for the sake of the family. thank you for your understanding.


i hate that my blog has become a series of memorial posts, i really do. but when a life is worth writing about, it should be documented.

as is the case of my friend lisa.

lisa was murdered on sunday. out of respect for her family, i'm not going to go into any details or post any links to news stories. there's been enough of that out there, and rather than focus on how it ended, i think it's better to focus on who lisa was.

lisa was...lisa. she was the most genuinely authentic person i've ever met. she was tiny, and loud, and boisterous, and hilarious. she was gorgeous and photogenic. the same word keeps popping up on her facebook now, and i think it's the most descriptive of her personality: firecracker.

lisa and i met through mutual friends in high school, then went on to share many classes together. the most notable was our AP art history class. "man!" she would exclaim. "why do we have to spend all this time memorizing dates and times when we could just be out looking at art?"

she'd do hilarious impressions of our teacher. it was really something to see this teeny, tiny vietnamese girl draw herself up, put two fingers under her nose to simulate a mustache, then say in a deep, booming voice: "the HAGIA SOPHIA!" in a dead on impersonation of our big, croatian, mustachioed teacher.

there was one field trip we took to the norton simon museum in pasadena. the teacher pretty much hopped off the bus, told us to meet at the museum at 1pm, then took off. lisa and i had shared a bus seat on the way up, and played blackjack. we spent the day together, poking in and out of various shops. we went to a coffee shop and had lunch, we spent an hour or two in the comic book store. she was fearless.

on the way home, we shared her headphones and listened to her cd player. if memory serves me correctly, we actually only listened to one song on repeat the entire time. "aeroplane" by the red hot chili peppers.

in ap enviro sci, we were seated at a table for four with our friend manny. we would pass the headphones around, me and manny rocking out to coldplay, and lisa trying to get us to understand her love of "boys who look like anime characters." i remember when we all had to create a biome for class, and we were sitting around my dining room table. her mom would drive over to see if lisa was done or needed a ride home, meanwhile, lisa was putting bright pink feathers on our carniverous duck. "this duck needs to be fabulous!" she exclaimed.

it's quite a testament to lisa just how many people are devastated by her loss. even those of us who only maintained facebook contact after high school feel it. she was the brightest light, and the world is darker now that it's been extinguished.

RIP, firecracker.