Emily was

I was sitting in the back row of a rental van, enjoying upbeat road trip music and the laughter of my friends as we settled into our twelve hour drive back from a week-long service trip in Kentucky. For the first time in over a week, I opened the social media applications on my phone, feeling bittersweet about being able to reconnect with the rest of my life, but also hating no longer having the excuse of no cell service or wi-fi to not have to be constantly accessible.

Emails, Instagram posts, links shared, Facebook messages. I clicked and read and replied. Then, a post in a US to Edinburgh Facebook group from the professor I’d traveled to Scotland with two years before. A picture of one of the girls I’d traveled with, and a link to an article, with some headline about her passion for performing arts festivals and general joy for life.

That’s nice, I thought. I wonder why she had an article written about her? Absentmindedly, I clicked the link, figuring she must have made some exciting new career move or something.

As soon as I started skimming the article, something felt off.

The picture was from our trip to Edinburgh two years before. The story shared information I already knew about her career path and accomplishments.

And then, the most glaring sign: “Emily Selke was…”

My breath caught in my throat. It had to be a mistake. The voices of my friends in the van around me suddenly felt distorted, as if I was hearing them from the long end of a tunnel. I wasn’t sure how they could be going on while I was uncovering something so overwhelming.

I left the article tab and, as I was about to search for more information, saw a notification for a photo I was tagged. I clicked. A photo of Emily, two friends, and I on a cliff overlooking Stirling Castle. A caption from one of the girls about the joy Emily brought to all of our experiences there, a list of memories, a note about how short a time we knew each other, but how special it was.

None of this made sense.

Finally, I found a news article. “Germanwings crash.” “3 Americans found dead.” “Yvonne and Emily Selke identified.” It’d been a tiny budget airline, flying over the Alps from Spain. They’d been only two of three Americans on board. No one knew the cause of the crash yet.

As if from a great distance away, I suddenly remembered getting a text message in a rare moment of service in the Kentucky mountains earlier that week. A good friend in my major, but someone I wouldn’t have expected to hear from over spring break. “I’ve been trying to call you, but I just remembered you’re on ASB… Hope you’re having fun!” I remembered thinking it was weird that she’d tried to call me. We didn’t talk on the phone. I’d shrugged it off, figuring it was something to do with grades or next quarter’s classes.

Now I knew otherwise now. She’d tried to call me, tried to tell me. When she couldn’t reach me by phone, she hadn’t wanted to say it in a text. She let me enjoy my spring break without this overwhelming news being delivered with impersonal, typed words on a screen.

So instead, I found out through social media.

I texted her immediately. Despite the photos, the articles, the posts, I couldn’t quite believe it until I heard it from someone else who knew her. She texted me back almost immediately. Yes, she’d tried to tell me before. Yes, it was true. No, she didn’t know how to react either…

What do you do with the death of someone you haven’t seen in two years, but who you once lived with in very close quarters for a very impactful month?

What right did I have to grieve, when her dad had lost both wife and daughter? When her long-term boyfriend had lost the woman he planned to spend the rest of his life with?

Unbidden, memories sprang to mind. Emily the level-headed one, dryly providing sassy contributions to all our conversations. Emily staying in working on assignments while the rest of us went out to bars, prioritizing the work she’d come there to do. Emily’s perpetual hunt for a good Mexican restaurant somewhere, anywhere, in Edinburgh. Emily insisting on walking from the train station to our flat with her massive suitcases, even when she got lost multiple times and it took her two hours. Emily’s joy and anticipation about her mother coming to visit at the end of our month. Emily ordering a massive flaming cauldron cocktail on our last night altogether, and refusing to share a single sip.

Around me, still, my carmates chattered and laughed, half of them likewise checking their phones for the first time all week. No one there knew Emily. No one seemed to realize that my whole world had shifted in the last twenty minutes I’d spent looking at the little screen.

Suddenly, I had to say something. I couldn’t bear the sound of their laughter. I couldn’t take it alone. “Guys,” I said. My voice came out a little stilted, quiet. “Guys, my friend… Someone I went to Edinburgh with… She and her mom just died. In a plane crash.”

No one knew what to say. I’d been selfish, really, in my desperate need to get it outside myself, to make someone else to shoulder the burden. I needed to be allowed to have feelings about this, and to say it out loud rather than containing it all in the tiny glowing rectangle in the palm of my hand.

They all asked me if I was okay. Someone said, “I just want all of you to know how much you mean to me.” We all expressed agreement.

Finally, because I was traveling with a Newman group, someone offered what I wanted, what I needed, the only tool we had in that moment: prayer. We joined hands as best we could around the car, someone asked me a couple questions for details, and we prayed, for them and their passage, and for the family and friends they left behind.

Slowly, conversations resumed around me, but they stayed quiet and calm for the time being.

Shortly after, we stopped at a gas station and met up with the people in our group’s other van inside when we all climbed out to use the restroom. Like my friends had been before I spoke up, they were talking and joking loudly, and my carmates used their ignorance as the invitation to break out of the funk I’d dragged them down into.

I came out of the bathroom and asked a friend for a hug, and she was only too happy to give it in between joking around with someone else. I didn’t say anything to anyone from the other van.

Then, I climbed back into back row nest, and decided all I could do for the moment was to put a smile back on and shove the whole situation from my mind. Emily was a meaningful part of my life for a very short time, but I hadn’t seen her in two years. In the meantime, I had only a few hours left to spend in such close quarters bonding with a group of people who were really special to me, who were alive and present and who deserved my attention and love.

I’d figure out how to mourn later.