Julieanne Leupold
My roommate.
Ice cream.
Laying out at the beach in January.
Coffee on the porch.
Disneyland.
A good song on the radio.
All of my life I have been utterly preoccupied with getting on the right path to ensure the best future. But getting another A on some stupid test over information that I won’t remember in 10 days doesn’t make me happy.
Watching a taped rerun of “Friends” at three in the morning makes me smile.
Driving through Jack in the Box for curly fries after a night out brings me joy.
This list makes me feel like I should start singing “These are a few of my favorite things” from “The Sound of Music.”
I guess I just started realizing what is truly important in life.
I’ve spent the last week freaking out over Songfest and graduation and life plans. The future just seemed to be looming in the immediate distance and I couldn’t handle that pressure with schoolwork and sorority life and my outside job.
And then Amy died.
I didn’t know her. I didn’t even recognize her picture in the yearbook.
But she was my age and some people that I know and love are grieving.
Suddenly my worries seem pretty trivial. Whether we hit the moves or the notes in Songfest is pretty much just inconsequential. What matters is that I was given the opportunity to spend a month in the company of truly amazing people, most of whom I will never see again after graduation.
But I will remember the way Mike and Nate danced their hearts out to Britney Spears. Or when Annabel and Laurie taught me how to triple-time step.
I’ll try to recall the late nights and long hours with only fondness and a little sweet regret that I can’t be there again.
It is hard to admit that your entire focus has been in the wrong direction. And I am sure in a few weeks I’ll start forgetting this lesson that a girl I never met who died in a car wreck taught me. I’ll forget to walk a little slower even though I’m late to class just to enjoy the sunlight. I still might put doing a paper in front of a friend when planning a Tuesday night.
But for now I am eating a little more ice cream and singing a little louder in the car. I am trying to grab every moment with every person that has impacted my life just in case I won’t see them tomorrow.
Because when I leave Pepperdine or the planet, I don’t want to be remembered as the girl who always accomplished everything that was to be done. Or the one who finished all her homework in hopes of graduating with honors to get into a Top 10 grad school to get a stable job.
I just want to be remembered as the girl who smiled too much.
March 14, 2002