I saw this GA post a couple of days ago, but didn't have time to answer it properly. It's a beautiful post, and deserves a bit of time spent reading and thinking about it. Thanks for that.

My friend Caroline was killed 30 years ago this year. It's a long time back - she's been dead, now, longer than she was alive - and I've remembered her often across the years. We became friends in college, and got close when we were in a production of the play "Ascent of Mt. Fuji" one spring. We were in a TV movie together as well, though I think I got cut from the final version (I was wearing a Humphrey Bogart t-shirt in one scene, and the studio was unhappy about the likeness).

Caroline was an actress. When she graduated she moved to New York City, and was taking classes here when she was murdered. It was a famous case at the time, in the States and abroad. I was living in Italy when she was killed, and a friend told me about it by phone just a day or two before Italian television launched a week-long documentary series on violence in America, using her case as a launching point for the program. The Alarm, the rock band, wrote a song about her, though I don't think I've ever heard it.

We weren't dating, or anything, but we were very close for a time, in the way you get when you're 21 and busy chasing life and the world is a gorgeous thing spread out in front of you. We talked a lot, about nothing in particular. I was already making my plans to move to Europe for my first visit, and she was looking at where to study acting. We talked about meeting up in the City in a year or two, when I got back to America, and we imagined what we'd be doing, and who we'd be. She had bright red hair and frank, curious eyes, and she was the kind of person who would listen to you carefully before she answered.

She was killed on the Upper West Side, eight blocks from where I grew up. She was 23 when she died.

So I guess I'm in.