Rachel

Rachel is second from top

A bouquet of white flowers rests on the stone pillars, a makeshift tribute to a young woman named Rachel who left this earth far , far too soon. It was years be fore she might have graduated and completed her masters in public health and returned to work with children in an HIV clinic in South Africa. Years before she might have married and had her own children. Years before she could do any of these things.

Her father comes outside to greet neighbors who were tying cream-colored ribbons on trees and placing candles at the sidewalk's edge, making Forest Avenue look like a runway. Just this morning he had found out that his youngest daughter, the one with a smile that could make chocolate melt, had died 8,000 miles away on a service semester to South Africa.

'I'm still trying to get my head around it all,” he says. How can he? How could any parent? Shocked by grief, this man was living every parent's worst nightmare, the one where you stay up till 1 am waiting to hear a car door slam...and it never happens.

He is standing on the very sidewalk where his daughter had

jumped

giggled

skipped

laughed

kissed

hugged

ran

cried

loved.

My daughter Aster and Rachel had been part of a crowd of girls-- the BFFs, sharing sleep-overs with with scary movies, giggles over first kisses, poses in prom photos with gawky boys who never danced with you.

In the Old Testament, there is the figure of Rachel, who is said to “weep for her children,” the Jewish people held captive in ancient Babylon. And now it is we who weep for Rachel.