I AM LAUREN
By
Edited by: Veronica Castle
Published by:
Crimson Cloak Publishing at Smashwords
Copyright 2015
Isbn 978-1-68160-987-4
This book is a work of Fiction. Names, characters, events or locations are fictitious or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons or events, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
This book is licensed for private, individual entertainment only. The book contained herein constitutes a copyrighted work and may not be reproduced, stored in or introduced into an information retrieval system or transmitted in any form by ANY means (electrical, mechanical, photographic, audio recording or otherwise) for any reason (excepting the uses permitted by the licensee by copyright law under terms of fair use) without the specific written permission of the author.
~o~
This book is lovingly dedicated to
LAUREN LECOMTE (1989-2009)
Lauren Lecomte was born on January 25, 1989 in Fairbanks. The moment Lauren stepped onto this planet I was certain she was from another galaxy. She almost immediately took off on her own two feet to discover the world around her. Everything interested her. She smelled almost everything she touched and petted all the animals she knew. The moment she came out of her mother’s belly, she heard the written word read to her. She became one of the most avid readers I have ever seen. She loved books. Eventually, she wrote some of her own stories. Her English was impeccable and she could speak it a mile a minute. She had so much to say about everything, but she didn’t share her thoughts with everyone, only the select few.
Lauren became an independent thinker early on and she went out into the world without fear. She was accepting of all human beings and even extraterrestrials. She never had a bad word to say about people of different backgrounds or color. She could step into the New York subway and talk to the first stranger she met. Where I sometimes saw danger, my daughter saw opportunities to hear other people. Yet, she didn’t make close friends easily in high school, as she was insecure about herself. But when she arrived at the university, she made friends. She wanted to be accepted for who she was, and she needed to be heard. Above all, she wanted to be loved, as most of us do, and she returned that love in kind. Yet, she learned to love those she didn’t know and helped them out. She had the kindest heart in the world.
Lauren traveled this globe with me several times. When she was two she sold poetry books door to door and was taken to the police station with her dad for soliciting. When she was five she traveled to New York to see her grandmother and to see the musical Cats, and saw several polar bears and penguins at the Central Park Zoo. In 2003, she drove across Canada and then flew to New York City. In 2007 she went to the Carnival of Binche in Belgium to see her dad’s relatives for the first time. She had a wild time, dancing. She also learned to salsa and rumba. She had feet that moved to many different drums. She loved life with all her passion.
Lauren was very human and there was something sad in her smile that seemed to light up the room. She had many conflicts with herself, the world and some people, but in spite of that she loved us all. Lauren was born with a special gift: she couldn’t hold a grudge. She was able to step out of herself and analyze a particular situation and explain why she couldn’t get along with a person. She especially had a lot of love and compassion for her mother. She loved her brother Nikos, her bosom buddy the day he was born. He misses her a lot as we all do. She graduated from Lathrop High School in 2007 and subsequently attended the University of Alaska in Fairbanks where she died of bulimia on February 3rd, 2009.
Lauren still had a lot of things to do. She was planning to get her Doctorate in Psychology. She was going to get her driver’s license this February. She wanted to either work as a deckhand in Homer or go to summer school. She also wanted to visit her sister Melissa in Atlanta and see her nephews Isaac and Ethan. She would have loved her niece Adelaide. Lauren’s plate was always full. She will have to pass these inconsequential things up on this trip. I actually think she has bigger fish to fry. Once she heard there was a seat on the last spaceship out, she opted off this planet to see what a better part of the universe looked like. Lauren was just passing through earth to say hi and to tell us how much she loved us all.
Dedicated To:
Denise Lassaw for all the help she gave me to make this a better read.
~o~O~o~