Gracie.

I got a call from my old friend Katie tonight at dinner. I haven’t spoken with Katie in maybe nine or ten years, but I was in the middle of having my son smear sweet potatoes and cheese on my sleeve so I took her number and called her back after we’d finished and cleaned up.

She was calling for a reason, of course. Gracie is dead, she said, and my heart skipped a beat. She was killed in a traffic accident: a car ran a red light and hit a cab with her and her coworkers. It was over a month ago.

• 1 dead, 3 hurt in SF hit and run
• Hit-run kills woman in cab and injures 3 — suspect held
• S.F. District Attorney’s Office Files Charges In Taxi Crash

I couldn’t say anything. Gracie, dead? What? That couldn’t be.

Gracie and I worked together at Aromas Coffee in Dallas ten years ago. We worked together Tuesdays and Thursdays and were a great team. We had flow.

But Gracie’s dead. There’s a hole in my life now.

Gracie had a list of things that she wanted to do by the time she was 30. Katie asked me if I remembered it, which I did. It was a gutsy list, one that made Gracie strecth and grow and live her life.

“She did it,” Katie told me. “Every single one.”

I didn’t doubt it for a second.

 

Gracie was 31 when she died. There were memorial services and a benefit at Bar Crudo (where she worked) to aid Carina Lampkin and Mike Selvera, Gracie’s fellow co-workers and passengers in the taxi.

I had lost touch — I hadn’t seen Gracie since I lived in Houston, and talked to her only occasionally since then — and Katie couldn’t find me until after the memorial services were all done and the holidays had begun. So she waited until after the holidays to call. I appreciate that.

I spent some time tonight looking over Gracie’s MySpace page, reading over the comments of all the people she touched. (Yes, I signed up for MySpace to do this. No jokes. Not tonight.)

I’m not surprised by any of it. It helps, a little.

Goodbye, Gracie. Rest in peace.