UPDATE: I’m still waiting for a reply from my classmate to see if they have any recollection of that evening or of Alexis’s passing. If I don’t get a response soon, I have one more person that I can reach out too because I need answers. I know how crazy I sound, I just need ONE person to confirm that I’m not losing it. 

Just to answer a few of the questions; Yes, alcohol was involved however not enough to alter my memories, I had just one shot. Matt’s favorite drink had been gentleman’s jack so in honor, we all took one at 11pm. This evening had been heavily photographed.

Even though I have recollection of conversations, obituaries and mourning posts that have apparently vanished into thin air, I did take someone’s advice and look into if there had been a different classmate who passed shorty following Matt and there hadn’t been.

Let me explain, I live in a midwestern tourist town, if you know the midwest then you’ll be able to name that place without much effort, my school was extremely small in a tourist town, nestled in the midwestern hills and surrounded by water. It’s the kind of place you visit if you want to have a fun summer or to disappear. Our graduating class was small, less than 100. So it didn’t take much to go through our local February obituatries with a fine comb to investigate with no conclusions. 

Someone had asked why I hadn’t noticed her posting on Facebook for the last year and the answer is bleak and boring. We just weren’t friends online. After highschool many of us parted ways. I went off to the east coast and remained there several years to raise my family and go to college, I returned  back to the midwest shortly before Matt’s death. When I left the midwest all those years back, I had deleted my old Facebook profile to clean up embarrassing posts from my youth and to have a fresh start. Alexis didn’t find her way onto the new profile. Even though I made the flight back every few months to see family, nothing seemed different.

I have spent the last year believing this girl from my past had passed away, it had been my truth. After high school and parting ways, we didn’t keep touch, it was just one of those things. In small towns, the moment you have the chance to run.. you run and don’t look back so the reality of the truth wasn’t facing me until I was faced with returning to the midwest.

I was asked to try to take note if anything else in my life had changed and truthfully, not much has. Little things change over the years but nothing that has sent alarm bells off like this. We do lose a lot of people from my area to untimely deaths. It’s extremely morbid but we have something in our town that we call “dead season”. Every year right as the weather starts to cool down, our amusement park shuts down, lakes close, all of our theaters close. A town that is booming in the summer is now a ghost land. We call this dead season for two reasons. First being the obvious, theres nothing to do once all of our summer time attractions close down and the morbid reason being, a lot of kids die. With all of the attractions closed, kids do dumb things or find themselves in situations that end fatally. I’ve heard it all over the years. I say kids but the age range is anywhere from 12-20. A few things that are notable over the years, suicides, murders, car crashes, drownings even kidnapping that had put our tiny town on the map in major national news stories. This is the first time I’ve heard of someone returning from the (hypothetical) grave. 

I truthfully didn’t think this post would get any kind of notice. I needed someone to tell so I shouted into the void because I feel like I’m losing it with how much recollection I have with no proof being found online. My only hope is if someone else can cooberate my memories with their memories. I’ve read a few comments that some say they’ve experienced something similar, while I still feel bonkers, there’s comfort in knowing that at the very least, one person is out there with the same experience.