Ingrid

A Wednesday has never meant anything to me at all. It’s a day, “Hump Day,” that’s notorious for being at the apex of the pain in the ass of this poorly constructed gameshow we call life; wasting time, 40 hours or more a week, for the right to live, or recover the others when you’re not forced to sleep.




I can’t get this Wednesday off of my mind. In the midst of working, working on a Vanadium paper for Inorganic Lab 616 in the Chemistry Library in McKinley, a Chinese friend of mine who I had seen for most of the day returned and interrupted me to tell me that Ingrid had died a few moments ago. She was at the hospital. I just missed her.




My world didn’t stop. I didn’t cry. Even by now, too early on the Monday morning after, I have yet to shed a tear. I’ve known many people who are now dead, many who are close to me. I’ve never been inconsolable but that moment on Wednesday lingers with Ingrid’s very noticeable absence.




I met Ingrid on the first day I moved into my room in the dorms a year-and-a-half ago. I was in the study room, and she was walking by outside the window. When she saw me, in a room that was filled to capacity, she turned around to walk through the door directly to me at the table and decided to talk to me about what I think was chemistry, since I had a chemistry book out. She was a 19-year-old, cute, aggressive girl from Niger who was incredibly difficult for me, a small-town Kansas boy, to understand her words. Actually, she was 15 when I first met her, and from Cameroon. She changed her story at one point, who knows why, and I bought it because I didn’t believe she was only 15 anyway. She told me her dad was a physics teacher, and left after she made me promise her that I would help her with chemistry, while assuring me that she didn’t need it.




Very soon I came to realize our rooms shared a hallway. She was always outside, always around, to make fun of me, boss me around, and be a general pain in the ass. She made me laugh, and I could see that she possessed a genuine goodness, a solid work ethic, and a desire to grow. I saw her around almost every day. She’d come over, and do chemistry, ask me ridiculous unrelated questions, complain about everything about me, and harass my roommates. Every time she saw me with a girl she’d come up and ask, slyly very unsly, “Is she your girlfriend?” She became a favorite of mine.




It was entirely through her intervention that I was unable to drink enough rum before the first anti-science meeting on campus to be a belligerent, violent asshole. I realize now, too, that her constant complaining, criticizing, of everything I said, did, or possessed didn’t just have entertainment value. I talked her out of being Pre-Med, and got her to major in Biochemistry. I spoke very highly of a professor in the Biology department that she promptly took a class from and volunteered for. I helped her for hours on end, odd hours, though she did handle most of it herself, I helped her all that I could. She was trying to help me because I was helping her.


She’d complain all the time, and not just about me. She’d complain about ‘stupid Americans’ all the time, especially during late night fire alarms when we were forced to evacuate as zombies. She’d complain a lot about the people around her, though not out of snobbery, just the disappointing realization that she was a better person than those in her company. I’ve always taken issue with people speaking better of the dead than they deserve, that it’s disrespectful. But I assure you, she was right.




Ingrid is a doll, and I love her like a sister. She worked hard, and came all the way from Africa to our humble Midwestern university. She made no victims, including herself. She was strong and charming. I felt sorry for her because she is better than the vast majority of women, but never seemed to be treated as such. Her hyperactive behavior and muscular frame made her come across like a Tomboy, which she certainly is not. The men that she liked, who I had a chance to x-ray, seemed to either treat her like a little brother or like she was disposable. I didn’t like this at all, but I knew that Ingrid wouldn’t settle until she was happy. I, the faithless, have faith in her because she gave me no other choice.




I’ve never been so geographically intertwined with someone I was so close to, and loved, who died. I’ve never mourned, ever. I’ve always avoided funerals because I don’t know how to mourn, and I don’t want to trouble the grieving. But now with this proximity the hideousness of the fact that someone as beautiful as Ingrid can be, and is, gone, deleted as readily, as simply as any of these words can be with the push of a button. And, while I haven’t cried, I’m pissed off that the problem of Ingrid’s absence, a problem because there is one less Ingrid, will never have a solution. I don’t like it, and I know she didn’t ask for it.




The last few times I saw her she hassled me for not seeing her sing in a gospel choir. I tried to explain to her that it wasn’t her, it was the gospel. Although our conversations had gotten much less incoherent from experience, I know that she didn’t understand.


But, last week, after a few times she had seen me on the scooter I’ve been restricted to for days of long walks, she saw me in the lobby of the dorms and begged me to let her take it for a spin. I said, “Okay, this is forward and this is backwards,” and I got off, making sure to turn the power all the way down as clandestinely as I could. She scooted forward a little bit, backwards a little bit and said, “This is fun, how do you make it go faster?!” There was a crowd around so I had to tell her that it’s the little nob on the top. She promptly turned it all the way up and zipped around in a tiny filled room turning circles through whatever path dodging bystanders could make for her while she laughed and screamed, “This is fun! I wish I was disabled!” The crowd looked mortified for my sake, with no clue how amused I was by the whole mess. When things looked like they were about to get ugly I told her to get off, so she did, and she flopped around saying, “I’m disabled! Get me one of those!” The housing lady at the front desk scolded her for her ‘behavior.’ I tried to look as sad as I could to get Ingrid in as much of that silly trouble as possible as I scooted onto the elevator to my room.




Righteously silly; mean and caring; strong and vulnerable; beautiful, casual, and professional; missed and loved. Those words do no justice to Ingrid. I miss her.