Number 18: Visit Laraine's grave
Laraine was the mother of one of my best friends. They moved into the area so that she could attend graduate school, and they attended church in our ward. Her and my dad as well as her daughter, Lena, and I became close friends immediately. I was 10 at the time, and Lena was 12. We were close enough in age that we always got along. We would spend nearly every weekend together, watching old movies, playing board games, making pizza, and just having fun being together.
They moved to Salt Lake City when I was 12, and I was pretty broken up about it. I would talk on the phone with them every once in a while, but it wasn't the same. When I was 15, my parents surprised me with a trip out to Salt Lake for a week during summer vacation. I spent the week with them, and saw all the sights and we all had a great time.
Two weeks later, I received a phone call from one of their friends saying that there had been a terrible car crash, leaving Laraine in a coma, and Lena paralyzed from the waist down. Laraine hung on for about a week until she passed away on September 2, 2006. It really hit me hard. There had been people in my life that had passed away, but she was the first one that really mattered to me. Luckily Lena recovered, but she must spend the rest of her life in a wheelchair. She manages very well, involving herself in sports and outdoor activities, like she always had done.
I always vowed to visit Laraine's grave at some point in my life, just to say goodbye. However, she was buried in Eastern Idaho and I had no idea how I was going to get myself over there. This was 3 years ago, and I currently find myself attending college in Eastern Idaho. I was looking over this list at the start of the semester, and I remembered the promise I made to visit her. I got a friend to drive me down to Grant, Idaho, a very small town with lots of fields and train tracks, and I visited her grave. It was a kind of pinkish stone, and it had a very modern font on it, and it wasn't really reminiscent of her, a serious and literary woman. There was a nice spirit in that cemetery, and I felt calm as I left, knowing that her body was at rest in the beautiful fields of Idaho and her spirit was at rest beyond the veil.
Number 20: Sing a solo in public
In church this semester, I decided to join the ward choir. When I went for the first time, there were only about five or six people, and I was thinking...maybe this was a mistake. However, once we got singing, it didn't sound too bad. At the end of the practice, the girl in charge asked us who wanted to give the female solo in sacrament meeting. We said we would all be comfortable doing it, so she did the "pick-a-number" thing. I won. I was half excited, half terrified. The song was Once In Royal David's City and I swear I listened to it like 50 times in preparation.
When the day finally came for me to sing, I had a wicked sore throat. My thoughts at this moment, you might ask? Somewhere along the lines of "&$%*#&@!#!@%!" I was freaked out and downed herbal tea with honey all day. But, I got up and did it anyway, hoping that I would miraculously sound good. I know I honestly didn't sound that great up there, and I was so nervous to be in front of so many people, but hey! It was another experience and now I know what it's like to perform in front of people. (FYI it's scary.)
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