My friend, Sarah

My friend was killed. It’s sentence that gets stuck in the throat. Even writing it out requires an incredible amount of cognitive dissonance. It doesn’t feel like it can be possible. And yet, go to any news site and you’ll see the headlines about her death on the front page.

Sarah Milgrim and her boyfriend, Yaron Lischinsky, were shot dead last night in an act of antisemitism outside of a Jewish event in D.C. Most of the headlines don’t mention their names, just their jobs at the Israeli Embassy.

Since I woke up to the text this morning I’ve been trying to process it — her death and the senseless, horrible circumstances that have made it international news. On the phone with another friend my brain and my mouth couldn’t connect with the deep pit in my stomach. All I could think is that the English language is woefully deficient when it comes to tragedy and grief.

Sarah and I hadn’t spoken in a few years. She was one of those friends I’d think about reaching out to from time to time but then never did, whether it was because I’d get caught up in my own life, the awkwardness of reaching out to someone after months (or years) of silence, or the false intimacy of social media that made me feel like I knew what she was up to anyway.

I feel sad and sick and regretful that I hadn’t stayed in touch. And then I feel guilt and shame because this isn’t about me and in the twisted grief Olympics, maybe I shouldn’t be as sad as I am because others knew her better.

We first met in elementary orchestra, but we didn’t become friends until middle school when we sat next to each other in our gifted class. I couldn’t tell you what exactly the curriculum was, only that we to took a lot of personality and career aptitude tests, played stock market games, and wrote notes back and forth when our teacher thought we were filling out self reflections. It was, in other words, a great place for building a friendship.

Sarah was brilliant and curious, someone who liked school because she loved to learn, not because she had something to prove.

In high school she convinced me to rejoin the orchestra. Unlike me, Sarah was disciplined in daily practice and was often up in the first or second chair. She had a beautiful singing voice, took opera lessons, and was one of the reasons I’d sign up for our school musicals even though I’d have to hide my horrible singing voice in the back of the ensemble.

She was funny, unafraid of being goofy, and a master of silly faces and silly voices. It’s cliche to talk about the brightness and kindness of someone who’s died, but Sarah truly was someone who brought joy to those around her.

She adored animals, most of all her goldendoodles, Chelsea and Andy, and her black and white bunny, Pablo. She was a vegetarian before it was cool. I still remember the horror on her face that time she discovered bacon on her Panera grilled cheese.

We’d go shopping together at Forever 21 and H&M—the only places we could afford on our middle school allowances. God, I was always so jealous of her style. Even against the middle school pressure to all dress the same, she would added her own flair to whatever she was wearing. She always seemed to know who she was and where she was going.

It’s strange, the things we remember. One of my most distinct memories is being at her house putting together a project for our 8th grade science class. We had to figure out a solution to the submarine test and we ran around her house testing out different bottles, throwing a lot of Alka Seltzer down the sink to make a pill bottle go up and down, up and down, up and down.

All day I’ve been trying to squeeze every memory of her out of my brain, as if archiving the details of her life can erase yesterday’s tragedy. I’ve been looking through old photos and most of what I can find is from our school dances.

Sarah in red ❤️

These pretty, posed photos are nice, but what I really want are the silly, blurry selfies that were probably left behind on our sliding keyboard phones and someone’s mom’s iMac photo booth.

Our freshman year of college I visited her at KU. I remember that bittersweet pride of seeing the life a friend has built a part from you. Like most old friends we never had a falling out, we just slowly fell into separate lives. These past few years I cheered from afar as she traveled the world, earned two Masters’ degrees, and moved to D.C.

I think about how much I’ve changed and grown since middle school and realize Sarah probably did too. Perhaps I’m mourning a different person than the one who died (the Prairie Village teenage girl I’m mourning probably hasn’t existed in years). But maybe that makes it all the more heartbreaking, because I’m sure the person she was at 26 was even more beautiful, passionate, and richly complex than she was at 16. Those who have known her best probably have more stories to tell, stories I hope they will tell. I know I’ve only scratched the surface.

As I write this, I fear her life will be overshadowed by the global politics of her death. I fear she’ll be a pawn in this vitriolic hate when all she ever wanted was peace (she literally got her Master’s from the United Nation’s University of Peace). And I can’t help but be slightly bothered that many of media headlines seem focused on the marriage that would have been and not the accomplishments she herself would have made.

In middle school we all think we’re going to change the world. From what I can tell, she was a rare grown-up who still believed she could.

-M