Aurora, and a life that she briefly touched, but forever changed
by Gus Stevenson
April 12, 2004
Aurora Sass died on April 29, 1996, at age 15. She was a very special person who, after knowing her for only a few years, managed to affect my thoughts and views on happiness, self-image, life, death, and growing up in ways I'm just now beginning to understand.
I met her at St. Cecilia's Catholic School during the 1992-1993 school year. We were both in sixth grade, and she arrived about in the middle of the school year. At that point, I really only saw her in class, and rarely spoke with her. I was surprised when, during the summer afterward, she came to my house and knocked on my door while I was playing Nintendo inside. What was extraordinary about this was that people rarely came over to visit me, and it was never a girl.
She was with another friend of ours from school. When I asked them why they had come to see me, they said that they were just in the neighborhood. To them it was no big deal.
Aurora came by several more times during that summer, often with other people, and almost always drinking a can of Jolt Cola, which made her very hyper. She would sometimes shout at the cars as they rolled through the corner stop signs, or jokingly attempt handstands or backflips. Mostly, however, we would just sit around and talk.
I looked forward to seeing them almost every day, but what I was not looking forward to was the new school year. Seventh grade turned out to be one of the worst for me. I felt that I had no real friends at that time, and some that called me a friend were often inconsistent, being nice one day, ostracizing the next. At that age, almost everyone you know in the world is in your class, and when almost everyone in your class seems to dislike you, it can feel as if the whole world is against you. During this particular year, this loneliness reached a pinnacle.
Aurora was one of the few people at that time who were consistently kind and respectful to me. She often stuck up for me when others tried to tease me, and she often said that what others think of you is only as important as what you believe yourself, a lesson that I was still a few years from learning.
We often worked together on class projects, and even worked on a few cartoons and stories. I found her to be very creative and inspirational, and it was good to know someone at that time who shared some of my artistic interests.