Fourteen Things I Know About Her

1. She was my first girlfriend.

2. I never loved her, then, as I should have: I was, at the time, neither equipped nor prepared to do so.

3. In the nine months that we dated, we never slept together.

4. This was my fault.

5. She loved Blue Oyster Cult.

6. Before I knew her, she spent a year in a body-cast to correct a curvature of the spine.

7. She was smarter than I was, in many ways.

8. She was the one who broke off the relationship, if our vague affection could be codified with such a term.

9. She dated, in succession, several members of my loose circle of friends.

10. Thinking of her always left me—not with bitterness, but—with a melancholy sense that I really should have tried harder.

11. I had not seen her in fifteen years, not since an impromptu reunion over a late-night Chinese dinner, in the course of which much was put to rest.

12. She ended up a large-animal veterinarian.

13. She married a photgrapher, and they were happy: they had no children.

14. She died, unexpectedly, in her home, six days ago.

So long, Red.