Elisa

 She was three feet tall or four feet depending which leg you measured. She would wheel into the dining hall every day and sit alone. We soon became friends, and sat together every day for a bit. She was shaped like a sack of corn from the barn, one arm working long and normal but abnormal considering the rest of her body rebelled. Her other hand was smaller. I was new and decided to sit with her, why because no one else would. Soon Eric who himself was not socially accepted also sat with her. We would act a fool and get the food coming out of her mouth.  At first she covered her over sized mouth with her hand trying to cover the food stuck to her massive teeth covered with braces to cover her smile as food came spewing out then after she saw we were just her fiends she laughed. Soon we were "her' friends, Eric and I. She often smelled like a hospital, she lived in one, back in the 80's they had been cutting on her for years, lots of pieces were gone, or restructured. She laughed so hard. She had long flowing hair kind of like twisted tin straw, it was pretty. She was so wise. It was her who made us her friends for she was an untarnished soul, she just wanted light, life. I said once it was one of the better things "I" did at the ROCK, and I hold by that, but now I see so much more about, who she was. Her visits with us started to stop, slowly. We knew something was wrong, but we were so young.  She one day came in after an argument. The argument was that she was ill, and she needed to stay home. Eric never really knew but I did. She fought to come to school to see us, Eric and I. Her color changed and she wore make-up to cover it. The liver, her dialysis, everything was failing, and she came to see us. Her color changed, gray green, it would get worse while we sat. Her color changed, gray green, it would get worse while we sat. and she wore make-up to cover it. We gave her something we gave her life like she had never seen, for a few months she was a normal teenager if not just for a few minutes each day. Soon her visits would only come once and a while. She would do one class, lunch and go. One day she stopped. We knew. I did. This is for all like Elisa, all who suffer and then create such light as they pass, I have been honored to know a few in my life, Elisa, Julie Ann, others, such light.

THOR