She Didn't Live to Comb Gray Hair (Mary Strand)

This month at YA Outside the Lines, we're talking about something we lost (presumably in our teens) that mattered ... and how, as a result, we write about grief in YA (young adult) novels.

For me, the obvious memory was losing a close friend of mine. My classmates and I felt our first loss of a classmate in 8th or 9th grade: a mysterious illness over winter break, and — poof! — Debbie was gone. But as hard as that was, Debbie was just someone I knew, not a close friend. It was sobering, and shocking, but not ultimately devastating for me.

Nancee Eberhardt was another story. We had a little group of five friends: not a clique (I've always hated cliques), but we hung out together, especially on weekends or after ballgames. Supie and I were the closest in our little group, so we saw each other a LOT, but Nancee was part of that larger group of five.

After high school, our little group mostly drifted apart, except for Supie and me. But we were all (I think) still in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, where we'd gone to Memorial High School. We heard snippets about or ran into each other from time to time. Then, in October of sophomore year of college, we got the utterly unthinkable news that Nancee had died. She'd just bought her first truck and was out somewhere freewheeling. She apparently went over the top of a hill ... but there was nothing on the other side of that hill. Killed. Suddenly gone. All these MANY years later, I still cry when I think of it. Like I am right this moment.

We happened to have a family dinner at our house that night, which must've been for the birthday of one of my sisters. One was born on October 11 and the other on October 17, and Nancee died between those dates. My sweet little Grandma Strand had joined us. (Unluckily for her.) I told my family about Nancee. My mom, who normally didn't say insanely stupid and thoughtless things, merely said, "Well, it was God's will."

Let's just say I disagreed. Vehemently. God could not possibly have ordained that.

I lurched to my feet, shouted, "WELL, FUCK THAT!" at the top of my lungs, and stormed out of the room. As I did, I thought to myself, "Oh, crap, I just shouted the F-bomb at my mom and in front of Grandma Strand. This will not end well for me." But no one said a word about it, then or ever, strangely enough.

Nancee's funeral is a blank, but I'll always vividly remember leaving the church, seeing Nancee's mom sitting alone in a car, and going over to mumble my condolences while we both cried.

In my published YA novels, I haven't dealt with grief. In a couple of not-yet-published YA novels, hoo boy, I've dealt with it, including even somewhat supernaturally in one. But in one adult novel, Seemingly Perfect, I created a world of four 40-year-old friends who lost the fifth friend at the age and in exactly the way that we lost Nancee. None of the four friends in that novel are based on our group of friends, but the dead character was based on Nancee. I even blogged about it once, four years ago when Seemingly Perfect released, but grief is this month's prompt, and it belongs to Nancee. With all my heart.

I still miss you, Nancee. Always.

Mary Strand is the author of Pride, Prejudice, and Push-Up Bras and three other novels in the Bennet Sisters YA series. You can find out more about her books and music at marystrand.com.