The Story of Vee

It's that time of year again. I've wanted to write this story for five years, but I've postponed it every time. I think it's time to finally do it, though.

Thirty-five years ago,

It was September 1991. I had graduated from high school just two months earlier. I wanted to study computers. I didn't want to spend many years at university—how ironic, if you know me at all—and I was on the waiting list for a two-year program in Toulouse. However, I had also been accepted to a slightly different program in Bordeaux.
I wanted to go to the one in Toulouse because it was my first choice, and most of my friends were already in Toulouse or were about to move there. I also knew Toulouse a little better.
I knew much less about Bordeaux, and somehow it didn't have the best reputation in my social circles. A couple of my friends were going there, but it just wasn't the same.
The thing is, the course in Bordeaux started earlier than the one in Toulouse. It was too risky to not start the Bordeaux program and hope that I would eventually be accepted into the Toulouse program and move there later.

For a few days, I commuted daily between my hometown and Bordeaux. Waking up at 5 a.m. and getting home after 7 p.m. is never fun, especially when you're 18 and just starting your life after high school. Despite still hoping I could eventually go to Toulouse, my parents and I decided to find me a room in Bordeaux.
My parents found it while I was in class. It was literally just a room in someone's house, but luckily, the part of the house where they lived was completely separate from my room. At least it was within walking distance of the school.

I eventually made it to Toulouse three years later, at the university. But that’s a story for another day.

So there I was in September of 1991, starting a new life in Bordeaux. The course was a two-year program of highly specialized training. Basically, I was going to become a database specialist. Graduates of the program were in high demand at the time because every industry in France had recently become computerized or was in the process of doing so. This school was said to be the best in the country for this particular program.

The school was literally a high school, but it offered post-high school technology-oriented courses like mine. Although we had more freedom than high school students, the atmosphere was similar, especially since, unlike college, I would spend about 30 hours a week for two years with the same group of 25 people.

That's the part I was looking forward to the least.

You see, I wasn't exactly popular in school.
It all started in junior high. Since I was a year ahead, I was the youngest and smartest in my first-year junior high school class.
I'll let you imagine where that led: bullying.
I guess I got lucky as far as bullying goes; the bullying I endured was not very bad. There was nothing physical; it was mostly being mocked and picked on, and being disliked by most of my classmates. I still managed to make some friends, most of whom were from other classes. We bonded over pop culture, mostly Marvel and Star Wars, and later, computers and TRPG, so we were kind of the geeks of the school. French schools don't have cliques like you can find in some other countries, but my friends and I were not very different from the kids in Stranger Things at the beginning of the series.

On a side note, I always find it ironic that we were mocked back then for liking things that have become mainstream pop culture over the past 20 years. Oh well.

But even with my friends, things weren't perfect. As our circle slowly grew, it began to include people with whom I didn't always get along. Because I was an awkward kid, even among my geeky friends, I found myself at the bottom of the group’s pecking order.
This reputation and "social status" stayed with me throughout junior high and most of high school. In a small city with only two high schools, everyone is just two or three degrees of separation from each other. Once you have a reputation, it sticks to you despite growing up and becoming a completely different person by age 17.
So, when I arrived in Bordeaux to join a group of twenty-five strangers with whom I would spend most of my days for two years, I was a bit nervous.

However, most of the 25 people didn't know each other either, and I had no reputation whatsoever with any of them. I was a blank slate, as were they. Then, the most surprising thing happened. I was soon adopted by a small group in the class. On the first day I joined them, I couldn’t help but feel like the odd man out in an established group. But that group had formed less than a week before I joined.

I can't remember exactly how it happened. There was a café next to the school that sold sandwiches. For the first few days, I bought a sandwich there and ate it in the nearby park. My future friends ate theirs in the café itself. They must have seen me and invited me to join them. That café became our base, where we always had lunch and spent a lot of our free time for the next two years.
I remember those first days sitting with them. I didn't talk much, and I felt like I didn't belong. Not only was I not used to being included so easily in a group, but this particular group truly were the "cool kids" of the class.
Sure, we were all computer science majors, but don't imagine that the class was composed of 25 nerds. Remember, in 1991, computers weren't ubiquitous yet but were on their way to becoming so. The field was hiring like crazy, and many people who had barely touched a computer before were also attracted to these courses for one reason or another—that was a good chunk of my classmates.

So, yeah, I suddenly became "cool" for the first time in my life.

Among the people who welcomed me with open arms was Vee.

She was one year older than me, and at 18, one year makes a big difference in maturity. Having two younger brothers, one of whom was barely younger than me, contributed to her maturity, and it also put her in familiar territory. She literally took me under her wing and became an older sister to me. We especially grew close near the end of our studies. We even became roommates for a short while when she grew tired of commuting daily, but before she got her own apartment with her brothers, who had both graduated from high school by then. They were from a tiny, cute village near Saint-Émilion. Driving to and from there every day was not fun, and it could take a long time, especially during rush hour.

We spent three years becoming best friends, and I owe her a lot. Without her, I don't know if or when I would have come out of my shell of shyness and awkwardness. I was a blank slate when I arrived in Bordeaux, which was liberating, but she's the one who helped me fill this slate with many of the characteristics that make up the "adult me" today.

However, during my third year in Bordeaux, I gradually realized that my time in the city would eventually come to an end.
I had graduated, but I didn't get the nice job I had expected when I started school.
Meanwhile, a severe economic crisis hit France, causing more people than ever to find themselves homeless. The situation was so dire that no company wanted to hire a twenty-year-old with no work experience. Even the company where I had done my internship couldn't hire me, and it closed a year later.
I spent a few months trying to find a job, until I stopped trying. Bordeaux started to feel like a dead end. And the more time passed, the more I realized that, although I still loved computers, I didn't want them to be my career. My parents were also becoming less and less okay with paying the rent on my studio if I wasn't going to find a job.

I finally left Bordeaux in the summer of 1994. I moved to Toulouse, went back to school, and decided to major in English to "improve my language skills." That's when I started the journey that eventually brought me to where I am now.

Although we stayed in touch for a while, I only saw Vee once more after leaving Bordeaux, at her wedding one or two years later. Then, we slowly lost touch.

It's interesting, yet sad, how I lost touch with all my friends from Bordeaux within three years of leaving. Those were the days before the internet when relationships with people close by were stronger, but long-distance friendships were difficult to maintain.

Years passed. I moved to the US, then returned to France and eventually moved to Japan. In the meantime, the internet became an important part of my life. As soon as social media became popular in France, I started looking for friends I had lost touch with. I had some success with some, but much less with some others.

Strangely, it was especially difficult to find my friends from Bordeaux.
Of course, Vee was at the top of my list of people I was especially trying to reconnect with.
But I had no luck.
It was literally impossible to find anything about her.
Sometimes women are harder to find because they get married and change their names, but unlike some of my other female friends, I knew Vee's husband and her married name.

Why couldn't I find a single thing about her?

Then, one day five years ago, almost to the day, I found her.

I used to especially look for her in early May because her birthday was in the first week of the month.

So, yes, I finally found her in early May of 2021.

I found her because the INSEE started publishing online the list of people who had died in France since 1970.

I found her and discovered why she had no online presence. She died in May 2000. Two days after her 28th birthday.

I didn't have time to process that information when I noticed the name just below hers on the list of people who died on the same day. It was her husband's family name, but it wasn't him. I didn't recognize the name, and when I saw the date of birth listed next to it, I realized with horror that the boy was only two years old!

A two-year-old boy with her husband's family name had died on the same day as her. Maybe you already figured it out, but I was so confused that it was difficult to make sense of it.
Still, the most probable explanation was that the boy was her son. And if they died on the same day, it could only mean that something horrible had happened.

I searched every possible combination of their names and that fateful date. I soon found a small obituary in the local newspaper archives confirming that it was her—no doubt about it; her name was quite unique—and that the boy was indeed her son. Further searches in the newspaper archives revealed what happened. It was a story far too common, one that we think will never happen to us or our loved ones until it does.

It was a Sunday night. She was returning from her parents' house to Bordeaux on a road she had driven countless times. At an intersection at the exit of a tiny village, a violent collision occurred with another car. The article mentioned one dead young woman, Vee, and four more people badly injured, including a little boy.

I was in shock. My imagination raced and tried to visualize the accident, the minutes before it happened, and the last hours of that little boy. I guess he died in the hospital. My rational brain tried to stop my imagination from running wild, but with little to no success.

The next few days were incredibly strange. I was in shock and mourning, going through the infamous five stages of grief as if she had just died, but she had actually died 21 years earlier.
It was unsettling. In 2021, I was experiencing emotions caused by an event from 2000. Physically and mentally, I was in 2021, but emotionally, I was in 2000.
I even tried to remember what had happened to me on that day, but how could I? All I remember is that in early May 2000, the semester was about to end, and I was about to graduate from my master's program. Had I already been accepted to the University of Florida? Probably. In any case, nothing that happened then would have connected me to her during her last days.

I pride myself on being rational most of the time, but it's difficult to be completely rational in such moments. I became very angry with her for whatever she did or didn't do on that fateful night that could have prevented the accident. From what I've heard, this kind of thinking is part of the five stages thing.
I tried to find the rest of her family online. Sadly, her father had passed away as well. Eerily, he died one day before the twentieth anniversary of her own passing. I don't know the reasons.
I couldn't find her husband for sure; his name is not uncommon, especially in the Bordeaux area. I couldn't find her youngest brother at all, but I found her other brother on Facebook.

I debated whether I should contact him, but I eventually decided not to, mostly because of the confusion I was experiencing, mourning his sister 21 years too late. I decided to wait until my emotional temporal displacement was resolved. I shouldn't have waited. Just before writing this post and considering contacting him this time, I learned that he passed away three years ago as well. I don't know any details. I only know his name, a date, and a place.

I can't imagine what it's like for the younger brother to lose his two older siblings. Or their mother, obviously. I think she’s still alive.

Why am I writing all this today? I'm not too sure. I've been meaning to write it since the day I found out. I always found a reason not to do it. But today, a few days after what would have been her 54th birthday, the 26th anniversary of her passing, and five years after learning the news, maybe it's finally time.
Maybe I need to do this to finally close that chapter and find closure.

Farewell, Vee.

What happened to you and your family was unfair.
You’ll always have a place in my heart.
Thank you for everything.