Untimely deaths touch many lives

Jessica, my good friend from home, wrote me an e-mail because she has a hard time keeping up with her friends' ever-changing home address. \nThe truth is that with time and three states between us, our years at college have made us grow apart.\nShe was sorry to tell me that an ex-boyfriend and good friend at times, Ben, was found dead in the woods near a golf course where we all had spent many summer nights breaking the law.\nLess than three days later, I e-mailed her back, telling my remorse over the death of our friend from home and now also our friend through music, Aaliyah.\nAaliyah died Saturday, mere days after her fan and our friend was found, in an explosion that shouldn't have happened, on a plane that she wasn't supposed to be on.\nDrugs, Jessica said, were the cause of Ben's death. \nEngine failure and possible overload of the plane, BET and MTV reported, were the cause of Aaliyah's. \nTwo untimely deaths of two talented people. My friends remember Ben as someone who took the wrong path, only just having been released from jail; Aaliyah is being mourned nationally with echoes of what would have been for her, in acting, music and in life.\nThese two deaths, side by side in the mind of this small town girl, seem so different, yet connect to the heart and the mind in the same way. While Aaliyah's talent reigned on Billboard's Top 100 and the big screen, Ben's humor touched the hearts of many friends, even when he did head down the road he shouldn't have traveled.\nWhen Tupac Shakur died, I tried to go to his funeral. Only a young teenager at the time, I begged to venture to California to shake hands with a mother who had raised a child in a neighborhood with little hope and created a talented rapper with powerful stories to tell.\nI never made it to that funeral, just as I cannot journey to say goodbye to my friend or my singing inspiration.\nAll weekend, even before I knew of the death of Aaliyah, I struggled with what to say in my column during this first week of school. But watching clips from all of her videos, from "Age Ain't Nothin' but a Number" to the most recent "We Need a Resolution" and thumbing through the dusty pages of an old Cougars yearbook, brought tears to my eyes.\nThe same sentiments that fill my heart at every new chapter in my life fill it now. The need for closure seems to be grasping me by my throat, as I fight back tears for two people who never met on Earth but who are surely shaking hands in heaven. How much I wish I could shake hands with both of them to express my admiration for their meaning in my life. \nAaliyah's choreographer and good friend Fatima described the amazing character of her friend. As I write with sadness to friends at home over the loss of a friend we no longer knew, I think of the character of the friend who at times would have done anything for any of us.\nAs I watch Fatima fight back tears, I hide my own and continue to remind the people at home of our friend who should not be measured by the road he traveled but by the heart he traveled with.