For those of you who don’t know, we lost our champeen. Amanda Foley Amos, known to most of us as AlabamaPink on Pajiba, passed away from complications to leukemia. She was the original combatant, taking me on before there even was a Cannonball Read, telling me how she’d totally whoop my ass. Every time I’d get even the littlest bit sentimental or sappy, she’d tell me to knock that shit off.
We had plotted out our trophy long before anything terrible was going to happen: a pink machete. Because how can you fight something with a ribbon?
It’s a sad thing to lose a friend, even one you never met in person. But she’d tell me to buck up, stop being a chump, and soldier on. So that’s what we’re gonna do. We’re gonna fight on.
“After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realised that there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find.” — Langford Wilson, 5th of July
Ah, shit. What’s there to say that hasn’t already been said? I miss her already. But of course, you’re right. We fight on.
God bless her, the girl was, and knowing her still is, a fighter. She fought it through to the very end.