Remembering Vikki

I know there are people for whom their college sorority is ancient history, just a group of women they were friends with when they were young. I am not one of those people. Ten years after college, my sorority sisters are still the women who take me out for every birthday, who let me spend holidays with their families when I can’t be with mine, who share my good news and bad, who pick out bridesmaid dresses for me to wear or scripture to read at their weddings. They are, in every way, my New York family. And when things go right or wrong for any one of us, there we all are: at weddings, funerals, bars, barbecues, birthdays, showers, and hospitals. For me to go a day without texting or calling or emailing at least one of them is rare. For me to go a week is almost unheard of.

But now we’ve lost one of our own. At first I wasn’t sure if I wanted to write about it, or even if I should. I wasn’t as close to her as some of my other friends were, and it didn’t feel like my story to tell. But isn’t it everyone’s job, as part of a group, to add their talents to the whole? To do what they’re good at? I’m the writer. So I write.

Vikki was beautiful and funny and smart. She was wildly popular, knew everyone in every fraternity and sorority on campus. She chaired philanthropy events, was president of Panhel (the governing body of all the sororities). She had what felt like a permanent spot up on the ledge overlooking McHebe’s, our favorite bar, where she would talk to everyone who came by. She was so incredibly full of life. The fact that she died so young is wrong and senseless and crazy and just… so… sad.

When I first got the call that the police had found her body, it was shocking, but there were ways to not think about it. There were phone calls to make, people to tell, friends to console. But the next day I called one of my sisters and asked her, “Did that really happen? I didn’t dream it?” And it seems that’s one of the feelings everyone else has been stuck on too—the sheer unreality of it. The feeling that this can’t really be happening. Things like this happen in Law & Order, not in real life. And certainly not to us. Our lives have no place for words like police and autopsy and ashes.

The funeral was yesterday, and sisters came. They came in from neighboring states. Two couldn’t find babysitters, so they brought their children and took turns coming in so neither had to stay home. Sisters who pledged after she graduated, who maybe only met her a handful of times, came to pay their respects. And that was the one thing in all of this that DIDN’T shock me. Because that’s what we do.

One of our sisters, Vikki’s best friend, got married in June, and that was the last time we saw her. And I’m so glad that’s the memory we get to keep as our final one. All of us laughing and dancing and teasing one another, and just enjoying being together. Coming together for something as purely joyful and hopeful as a wedding. I like to think that if she could have picked that last memory for us, that’s exactly how she would have wanted it.

I know there are a lot of sisters who read this. I'd love it if you added a comment with a memory of or a story about Vikki.