Yesterday evening around 6:00 my family and I went out to the high school to take over the tennis court, since my sister was home for the day and we could all go. There had been a storm on its way, and those dark clouds loomed ominously over the court even before we actually got to it. We played for maybe ten or fifteen minutes (Britt and me vs. Nick and Mom, with Dad playing fetch) before the rain came. By the time we gave up, the balls were soaked and hardly bounced, our racket handles were slick, and the court went from slippery patches to puddles. We played in the rain, even, until the first flash of lightning and rumble of thunder. We weren’t out there for a whole hour, but… I think we had about an hour’s worth of amusement. It’s one of those family moments I don’t think we’ve had in a long time, and that we may have very few of in the future.

Things are changing.

18-year-old dies in I-81 accident

Six months ago today I learned that my friend DiGi had passed away in a car accident. Derek Pence was eighteen years old, the same age as me, when the car he was in (he was a passenger) went out of control and flipped, throwing Dig’ through the back windshield..

Derek Allan Pence was pronounced dead Sunday night at City Hospital
By EDWARD MARSHALL / Journal Staff Writer
POSTED: January 15, 2008

MARTINSBURG — An 18-year-old Martinsburg man was killed late Sunday and three others were injured as a result of an accident on Interstate 81 in Berkeley County.

Derek Allan Pence, of State Circle, was pronounced dead by the Berkeley County medical examiner after being ejected during the accident.

According to police, Pence went into cardiac arrest while being taken to City Hospital in Martinsburg.

The driver, John Michael McFadden, and two female passengers were taken to Winchester Medical Center.

The accident happened at 11:08 p.m. in the southbound lanes of I-81 at the 19 mile marker, according to police, who arrived on the scene shortly after fire and emergency units. West Virginia State Police troopers P.S. Kennedy, J.J. Bowman and N.K. Campbell responded to the accident.

According to police, McFadden is believed to have been driving a 1992 Toyota Corolla south on the interstate when the vehicle left the road and struck a guardrail before going into a spin and flipping over three times.

Pence, who was sitting in the driver’s side rear seat, is believed to have been ejected from the rear of the vehicle following the first rollover. He slid for about 120 feet before coming to a stop on the interstate’s west-side shoulder.

The vehicle came to a rest facing north in the left-hand lane of I-81 South.

The accident was under investigation as of Monday afternoon.

Pence was a 2007 graduate of Martinsburg High School and was employed by Game Stop at the Martinsburg Mall, according to his obituary.

A memorial service will be at 4 p.m. Thursday at Brown Funeral Home in Martinsburg.

Memorial contributions can be made to the American Cancer Society, 122 South High Street, Morgantown, WV 26501, in lieu of flowers, in honor of Inge Lynch, Pence’s grandmother.

And his obituary:

Derek A. Pence

Derek A. Pence, 18, died Sunday, Jan., 13, 2008, at City Hospital, as the result of an automobile accident.

Born March 5, 1989, in Montgomery County, Md., Derek is survived by his father and step-mother, Eric and Shannon

Pence , and his mother, Doris Marion.

He was employed by Game Stop at the Martinsburg Mall.

Derek was a 2007 graduate of Martinsburg High School.

In addition to his parents, he is also survived by his brother, Kurt Pence, of Martinsburg; sister and brother-in-law, Amanda and James Tyeryar, of Frederick, Md., sisters, Tiffany Sanders and Amber Sanders, of Hagerstown, sister, Kellie Holman, of Gaithersburg, Md.; two paternal grandparents; two maternal grandparents; two step paternal grandparents; one niece, two nephews, a number of aunts, uncles, cousins and numerous friends.

A memorial service will be at 4 p.m., Thursday, Jan. 17, 2008, at the Brown Funeral Home, 327 West King St., Martinsburg.

In lieu of flowers, and in honor of Derek’s grandmother, Inge Lynch, a breast cancer survivor, memorial contributions may be made to the American Cancer Society, 122 S. High St., Morgantown, WV 26501.

I was told about this through a 4am text message from a friend, who was on the phone with Digi’s girlfriend Becki. I wrote this in my Myspace blog on the Friday after DiGi’s viewing and after-party:

11:32 AM – A Day so New the Past is Dreamlike.
Current mood: renewed

So yesterday was Digi’s wake and party. It started to snow in the morning and it was still snowing when we got there. There was no school, I didn’t go to work because of a migraine, and we left around 3:30. When we got there we were actually kind of late.. the line to get into the room was long already. As soon as Nicci and I got in there and in the funeral home my body just started trembling inwardly from all the emotion.

When we got up to the guestbook I signed and walked some of the way into the room… and then I went back to wait for Dominic. I held his hand as we walked in and went over to John, Krispy, and a few other folks. Eventually Nicci and I went to sit on the other side of the room with Chris and in a cluster of my friends (like Becki, Danielle, Ming, Munchie, Justin, Mike, Emma, Billy, Faye, Andrew, Terry, Brandon). There were so many people they had to open up another section of chairs; and there were still people who didn’t have chairs out in the hallway; and still some outside who couldn’t fit in that hallway.

The service began and I actually took a look at the table at front and center of the room. It was covered by a red tablecloth and on either side was a standing lamp with a red tinge, and a cross behind it. On the table there was the picture of Digi I took at graduation, standing in a frame to the left of Digi’s urn. The urn was a red colour, too.. On the right was a picture someone else had taken that had his name shopped onto it.

Seeing the photo that I had taken was what made me crack. I just started bawling and shaking uncontrolably. Dominic held me until it subsided some, when people actually started talking at the podium. I think his grandmother or step- grandmother was the one who was talking at first. Then Joker came up, and sang this song “Please Don’t Bury Me” .. that made me cry again some, too. Parts of it made us all laugh. Digi’s dad went up to speak, and he broke down before he could say a lot..

When they opened the microphone up to whoever had something to say, Terra, Scarecrow, WaffleZ, Munchie, Pudgy, Chandra, Mike, Morgan, and Brandon all went up to speak. We were all crying and sniffling and laughing at the same time to the stories we all had about Derek. Had everyone who wanted to share a story gone up, we would have been there all night. But we had to close at 5:00, and so we all filed outside and scrambled to get rides to the Comfort Inn for Digi’s party. When we got outside I saw Gnorski drop to his knees in the slush crying… I stood by him and rubbed his back to try to comfort him. It was such a sad thing to see..

The party was just the way he could have wanted it. It was downstairs at the Comfort Inn with lots of food (although nothing really of substance) and a DJ. Nicci, Sophie, Nikki, and I all bummed a ride from Krispy. The deejay had a mist machine and flashy lights and techno.. Digi would have loved it. It was so much fun, too.

The first song the DJ played when we got there was a slow song.. and Wendell and Brandon danced together to it. Then when the dance music came on everyone got in a circle on the dance floor (there actually was a dance floor) and were having like a moves contest. Apparently Scarecrow won with some fancy hand moves (I couldn’t see because I’m short).

I saw Katelynn there, Pockets, Ron, Gnorski, Joey, Andrew, Mike, little Jeff, Becki of course, Danielle, Ricky, Morgan Brett, … well. Almost everyone was there. At some point I was left with Joey’s jacket, hat, and drink, and I was like “Oh jeez, now I look like Joey from the back.” And they were calling me his mini-me. Dx !

A lot of people picked me up. I swear I probably got picked up more often than the little kids there did. Rawr. But oh well, lol. Uh, Gnorski hugged me a lot. And I partially did that on purpose, to avoid being caught unmanned. Haha. And little Jeff came back from the bathroom after one of the moshes and like dragged me out on the dance floor and tried to dance with me.. but in his sweatiness he dropped me on the floor trying to dip me. XDD

Uh, I think the highlight of the night was probably all the juggalos getting to the middle of the dance floor and yelling along with “Homies.” It was funny ’cause there was a circle of guys and then us four girls made our own line because the guys wouldn’t let us in their circle. Haha. I’m sure that’s not really the case, but whatever. It was amazing.. and unifying.

I tried to join in the mosh thingy for “Bodies” but whenever the chorus started and the bashing started people were just moving me out of the way instead of ramming into me. I went over to Danielle afterward, put my head on her shoulder, and whined, “Danielle, they wouldn’t let me playy.”

Nicci and I had to leave early, because the ice had started and mom and dad didn’t want us that far out there during the ice. I stole some hugs and took my dyed green rose and a remembrance sticker with me.

The whole day was really.. liberating. I’m not so sad anymore. Scarecrow was right, Digi can live on in all of us if we embrace ourselves. That’s what he always did. He was always himself all of the time. And that is the key to being truly happy. I woke up this morning feeling like it had been one long nightmare… and that I was okay. Saturday is going to be hard but I think I am okay.

And I had been okay, more or less. And I have been okay, except every once in a while I hear a song, or do something, or someone else does something, that reminds me of him. Then I break down. I have a bit of a shrine to him on the wall behind me, which has yet to really set me off except, of course, when I was actually putting it together immediately following the accident. It still amazes me how quickly we all pulled together, probably over half of Martinsburg, really, some of us total strangers, to memorialize DiGi. Everyone was really supportive to each other, and we all got through thanks to that..

But every once in a while it still tears me apart. And I guess the pain never really goes away when you lose someone. You can set it on the back burner so that life goes on, but every once in a while it comes back to the forefront, and it’s a different kind of pain–duller, if anything–but it still hurts just as badly. To this day I would do anything to bring that man back, tell him how amazing he is, and tell him to be more careful that Sunday night…

亲爱的日记,

Yesterday morning Nicci came in my room around 11:00 to ask me if I was going to get up and go play tennis with Mom, Dad, and him. Of course I jumped out of bed, got dressed, and we left with nothing but tennis rackets and balls. We got out to the high school and hit some balls over the net and just practiced, only for about an hour before we all got really hot and dehydrated and had to go home. It was fun, but we were totally unprepared for the weather. We got home around 12:30 and even though I had only gone to bed at 4am I stayed up and worked on my Madcactus art. Around 4:00 pm I woke Mom up and she and I went out to Inwood to get Candace for dinner, Harpers Ferry, and a sleepover.

When we got home Mom made pasta for dinner. After dinner, around 6:00, we all got in the car and went on our way to Harpers Ferry. It took forever to finally find parking, and we ended up by the train station around 7pm. The ghost tour started at 8:00, so we walked over to the Potomac and went less than halfway across the bridge into Maryland (not all that interested in going so far; we were in for a lot of walking anyway). After the bridge we walked down toward the engine station (John Brown’s Fort) and then walked up by the wax museum and back down toward the general store and the train station. We stopped at the ice cream stand thing to get slushies and ice cream, and by the time 8pm rolled around the ghost tour woman was there and we were on our way around the Ferry.

There were some very interesting stories. There was one about a captured Union drummer boy who was killed by his jailers while they were drunk, who accidentally threw him out off the balcony and over a cliff; one about a strange medical doctor who wished to be buried standing straight up and who paid for a man to sit by his grave for 9 days and 9 nights to help him when he rose from the dead; one about a park ranger from the ’70’s who heard a baby whimpering and buildings collapsing in his ranger’s quarters to learn from a booklet written by an Annie Marmie (or something similar to that) that a baby had been killed in its mothers arms on that land from Civil War fire; even one story about a malignant soldier’s spirit in the Harper house, alongside a slew of harmless ghosts that supposedly reside there; and one about a priest who haunts the only surviving church from the Civil War Era (they struck British colors so that neither side would shoot at them).

The tour lasted about an hour and a half. Once it was over we walked by ourselves (Mom, Dad, Nicci, Candace, and me) to the Saint’s church so that I could take some pictures. I took pictures of some of the other places, too, on our way back to the car. The trip was well worth the $5 a person. We got home around 10 or 11:00 and Candace and I stayed up until midnight talking and eating from orange. I was peeved that I had a dream about Tyler; I can’t imagine what I had been thinking before I fell asleep last night.

This morning I woke up to Brittney’s door (I sleep in her room while she’s away) flinging itself open after I had already woken up once to have oatmeal. I got up and eventually Candace got up, and around 1:00 Mom dropped us off at the mall. Candi bought cigarettes and we got 20th Century Masters CD’s (they were 3 for $20) and she got Motley Crue and Pantera CD’s, then basically after that we went to drop her back off at her house, where she lives with her maternal grandparents. After we dropped her off it was looking like an ugly storm, so Mom and I stayed home to have tea and wait for the rain to pass until about 3:00. Then Mom took me to JD’s house for his birthday cookout.

I got there after food but before cake. Krispy, Hambone, Ron, and Gnorski were already there, as well as some of JD’s extended family members and a few other people I didn’t know, like Hystry. So we sang “Happy Birthday” and ate cake, then Raymond and his girlfriend showed up. JD wanted to show them his drum set, Ron showed Raymond Assassin’s Creed, and then we all went outside for the yearly water balloon fight. This year I brought extra clothes, so I didn’t feel too bad getting soaked. And I did indeed get amazingly soaked. At first just the boys were playing, but eventually it came my turn and Gnorski dragged me up out of my chair. The first balloon was so big that they didn’t want to actually hit me with it ’cause they thought it’d hurt me, so Hystry got the task of popping it over my head. But he missed and somehow got like the backs of my legs.

Ron filled up another balloon and someone threw it at me (granted, they had my attention), and the thing popped me across the face but it didn’t pop. It actually landed on the chair next to me. The side of my face was almost numb, and we were all laughing. Raymond’s girlfriend asked me if I was OK, and I think so did everyone else, ha ha. That one they popped over me too. I was not actually hit with a single balloon that popped. Then again, none of the ones I actually threw popped, either. They went through a lot of trouble to get Raymond’s girlfriend ballooned, and when they did all kinds of hell broke loose. It turned into a free-for-all and everyone got really soaked. I didn’t get to pick up a single balloon, and I actually hurt myself kicking one, but I still had fun with it.

After that Ron brought out his orange and they tried that while Hammy and Gian were filling up more balloons. I just kinda watched them do that, ’cause I’ve never had amazing luck with putting water balloons down. That seems to be the only time they’ll pop for me. Anyway, Raymond and his girlfriend left before that battle broke out, and Krispy had had to take Hystry home before the second battle. JD’s mom had gone to work for like an hour (hence the orange) and so we were free to create chaos. Which we did, including Pockets with the hose, which he had accidentally shot into the dining room, not knowing the window was open. By the end of this one we were all drenched, and we finally cleaned up and went in to change and warm up.

We just kind of kicked back after that and played on the computer, watching videos, listening to music, and saving pictures. Ron and Krispy left around 7:00. I had to leave at 9:00 but I made sure to get Gnorski all wound up (about whether a Jeep was a Jeep or an SUV) before I left. I was thoroughly amused by this.

I’m just kind of sad, now that I realized that this could be the last time I see any of them before, you know, next summer. Total bummer. Then again, it probably would be really the only time I’d get together with them all anyway. It was definitely a bang of a way to say goodbye. This whole weekend was worth the effort and planning.

送别,

Lindsay,

the Madcactus.