Remembering Stacy Loveheart

Four years ago yesterday I lost a friend. Cheryl was my neighbour in Oxford in ’04, one of four girls who lived across from Joy and me in the ‘big room’ on our floor. They had wrestling matches, laughed a lot, did copious squealing and some homework, and got into a prank war with the boys next door (which included frozen underwear and finally a ‘peace dinner’). Cheryl had long, shiny dark hair and a laugh that would split your eardrums and make you smile at the same time. She had a ridiculous flowered muumuu that she wore around the house. She would sing the same line of a song over and over as she moved around the house, almost without realising it. She was loud and hilarious, and lovable.

For our end-of-semester talent show, Cheryl played a talk show host called Stacy Loveheart, who interviewed various people (all played by her roommate Andrea), from Peter Pan to President Bush. I think the most memorable question was put to ‘Peter’: ‘How far away is Never-Never-Land, and can I drive there?’

On August 14, 2004, in Mason, Texas, Cheryl lost control of her car and hit a tree. And our Oxford group changed forever, and so did my world. I was angry, sad, confused, and just cut up inside for months. (It didn’t help that her death kicked off a year of difficult stuff, including another death of someone I loved.) I didn’t understand. I was angry at God. I spent hours crying and praying and writing and trying to make sense of it all. I sat through the funeral almost too sad to cry, and then wept uncontrollably at her ACU memorial service a few weeks later.

Of course, since this happened in August, the Olympic Games were on – back in their original home of Greece, in Athens. I remember watching the gymnastics avidly, as I always do, and watching swimming and track and field, and attempting to pronounce Pieter van den Hoogenband’s name. As I’ve watched these Olympics, my mind has flashed back to those afternoons spent sitting with Julie in the House 9 living room, watching synchronized diving and swimming, and trying to learn how to hold this big grief that had ripped a hole in our hearts.

I still don’t have answers for Cheryl’s death. I’ll never know why it happened, and the world will never seem quite as safe as it did before. But somehow, the fact of her death – and the fact that she’s in heaven – is more all right than it used to be. And when I think of her now, I remember her laugh and her black fedora and her big, sparkling brown eyes. I remember someone who lightened my days and made me laugh. And I bet she’s still doing that for everyone she meets, up there in Never-Never-Land.

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