1/30/08:
"Profiles in Courage" - Suzan Odabasi
In the four months Cassandra Voss and I roomed together, the most important thing she taught me is to not be ashamed. Not of my family background, my insecurities as a woman, or for not having all the answers. We also spend much time talking about what we thought was the right thing to do in contrast to what others thought we were supposed to do. And, as idealistic college students are supposed to after all, we planned how we each were going to change the world in the many years to come.
When we left for our road trip to California this past May, I felt like I was in a really good spot. I thought I could do anything I wanted and that I was going to go back home to Germany after my year as an exchange student to finally stop pretending to be someone I was not. I was going to take charge of my life…
Little did I know that a few short hours later, my life would change forever.
I found myself sitting in the wet morning grass next to Highway 80 West. Somebody wrapped Cassandra’s rainbow-colored pillowcase around my bleeding arm. I could not manage to get a clear thought in my head and just felt my heart pounding inside of me waiting for the nightmare to end. I thought of the Colorado mountains that I had told Cassandra about when she had woken up to ask where we were. “What’s your name?” I heard an urgent voice and felt a grasp on my shoulder. “Suzan”, I told them. “Where were you going?” “Who was with you in the car?” I put the fragments in my head together and answered as best as I could. They said that I was in Nebraska and that they wanted me to be calm and strong. An ambulance took me to the hospital where the doctor told me that Cassandra was dead and that my arm was going to scar.
Frankly, I have no idea how I was able to make it through this surreal morning. I walked into the entrance hall of the Emergency Room and took the phone somebody handed me. I had to tell my host dad what had happened and forced it out of myself for the first time that day. My arm was in a bandage and the hospital had to release me. A driver took me to a motel close-by and for the first time in my life I really did not care what someone would think of me. I remember seeing myself from the outside, wondering what I would say to that person in the passenger seat, numb and crushed.
The voices I heard on the phone that afternoon carried me and made me feel like I had to be strong. I knew that there was no other place on earth that I wanted to go to but St. Norbert College. Two mornings later I entered this very church in tears and attended a memorial service for Cassandra which made it all seem even more unreal and as the pain was eating me up inside, I also felt the beauty of having known this incredible woman. Every conversation I have had about her and the accident since then has been like a puzzle piece that helped me find a new purpose and a new identity.
One of Cassandra’s favorite quotes by Elizabeth Johnson says: “Creation is not a one-time event.”
To me it means that if you try to make sense out of something like this, you can never come to a conclusion. You can never wrap it up nicely, put it in a drawer with a stamp on it that says: dealt with. Instead, you create meaning over and over again. There are days when you want to retreat into some corner, change everything about yourself, and hide from the world. But so far, something has kept me from doing that for very long.
It is my vivid memory of Cassandra, and her constant fight against fear, that help me go on. Yes, I am going to be a different person, I will never be the same as on May 20 ever again, but maybe I can be a better person. Maybe I can talk other people’s fear away, like she used to do it with me. Maybe I can help others become comfortable with who they really are. Maybe I can keep telling Cassandra’s story as I continue my own.
Courage means to force yourself on a daily basis to fill the darkness inside of you with the brightest light you can find. I try to do it while being confronted with voices who constantly suggest that I need to be sad, and guilty, and deserve to be pitied. On good days, I can make these voices go away and I have no doubts that those would be the days on which Cassandra would be most proud of me.
