Emily Brook Howell

20 March 1980 — 12 March 2000

Our worst fear is not that we are inadequate; our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, "Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous?" Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God; your playing small doesn't serve the world. There is nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. We are born to manifest the glory of God within us. It is not just in some of us; it is in everyone, and as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela

The Beginning

Emily and I became friends through one of her third-grade teachers, who then became my fifth-grade teacher in Dallas, Texas. Emily, who lived in Lexington, Kentucky, wrote a letter to Mrs. Davis in the spring of 1991, asking for a pen pal, and I said "me! me!" I wrote to her, and she wrote back; however, that first letter never reached me. Luckily Emily wrote a second time, and that letter did find me, and so began our nine-year friendship.

Emily and I were pen pals, but we were also much more than pen pals. We started out by writing about our families, our pets, and our interests. However, both of us liked to write and expressed ourselves well through the written word, so we also wrote about our hopes and our fears and our mistakes.

The Middle

I've never had an argument with Emily, because I've never had the opportunity. I've only visited her twice in my lifetime. Once was when I and my mother were coming back from visiting my brother in Pittsburgh, and we managed a five-hour layover in Lexington. My mother and I spent the afternoon with Emily and her mother, and it was wonderful. We felt awkward at first, but after a few minutes it was like we'd been together forever. We must have been 14 or 15 at that visit.

In July of 1998 I went to Lexington to visit Emily, more on a whim than anything else. I didn't have anything else to do, and my family wasn't going on vacation that summer, so I wanted to go somewhere. I spent a whole week in Emily's company and enjoyed every minute. She took me to meet her best friends and her favorite places. One time, we spent a highly amusing two hours after midnight in a CVS pharmacy, looking at the cosmetics and fake nails and playing with the toys. We ended up buying plastic nails and nail glue, and when we got back to Emily's house I did her nails and painted them silver.

I wish I could say more about our friendship, and Emily's life, but this page is not a biography. It's a testament to the beautiful soul of my dearest and oldest friend. She was the most beautiful, affectionate, generous, passionate, sensitive, expressive person I have ever known. Unfortunately, I cannot share what made her so, because she chose not to share with the public much of what she let me know. This is not to say that I know everything, because I don't. Her life is also her friends' life, and she was as faithful to them, in not telling their secrets, as I must be to her. Of her life, I only know what she showed me, but that is enough.

Emily was the kind of person who would send, as a Christmas present, three used poetry anthologies wrapped in Hanukkah paper and with a "Happy Winter Solstice" card. That gift is "uniquely her." I have so many things in my life, tactile as well as insubstantial, that she gave to me, or that remind me of her.

Emily was a poet. I am no judge of poetry and have no idea how good she was. She has been writing poetry for as long as I've known her, and quite possibly the verses she wrote back then are little more than teenage angsty drivel (albeit better teenage angsty drivel than mine, I must say). However, given time to develop and mature and grow, she could have been a Chaucer or a Dickinson.

At the least, she would have been my friend for more than a mere nine years.

Emily and I were polar opposites. She's the sort of person I probably never would have talked to if we had been in the same school, if only because I was a dork. Knowing her bent the walls of my mind and forced me to reconsider my unconscious prejudices against people whose lives are not like mine, and who do things I wouldn't. If a friend "trespasses" against your ideas, what do you do? Give up the ideas.

I wish I could tell her about my life now. I have a wonderful boyfriend, and I know that Emily would be so happy for me if she knew. Emily had the gift of listening and understanding. I don't think I completely understood her when she was alive; our realms of experience were too different. And now she is gone where I cannot follow. I will never know what she went through.

The End

Emily was spending a semester in Costa Rica on co-op from Antioch College. She was in love with Costa Rica. One weekend, eight days before her twentieth birthday, she and two female friends rented a cabin at the beach, and Emily Howell and Emily Eagen went to a bar for the evening, but they never came back.

They were found in the morning by the side of the highway and had evidently been kidnapped and executed.

March 2000

On Thursday, March 23 I flew from Massachusetts to Lexington, KY to attend the memorial service for Emily. The service was very non-traditional, which was how Emily wanted it. There were candles around her urn, and at one point Emily's friends and family got up and lighted the candles. (I have the candle I lit.) The service itself wasn't particularly moving for me, I think, but afterwards I stood and looked at her picture and her urn, and I cried. (I looked later, and there was a small puddle where I had been standing.) People kept on coming by and trying to comfort me, but I didn't want to be comforted. There's a certain sadistic pleasure in being intensely miserable, and in wearing black for mourning as I did for several weeks after Emily's death. Emily would have understood how I felt, and how I wanted to feel in honor of her.

I saw again Emily's family and friends whom I had met before, and I met some whom I had never before seen. It was an odd feeling to be there, because I recognized some people from pictures and letters and felt as though I knew them. They knew me, too. Courtney, one of Emily's best friends, was extremely friendly and understanding. She asked me if I would be her pen pal, and I said I would. She came and stood next to me when I was crying, but she didn't attempt to comfort me. She understood my need to mourn.

Lance, Emily's ex-boyfriend (but constant soulmate), was in agony. I felt for him, but I think the only thing I could do for him was to leave him alone, which I did. However, I told him that Emily loved him (which he knew, I'm sure, but I hope it helped him as much as it helped me when Courtney told it to me), and that she talked about him in every letter she sent to me (which, if not literally true, felt true). I know she really loved Lance. And I love her, so I feel a strange but powerful connection to him, and to her other friends in a similar but less extreme manner.

Emily's mother gave me a great gift; she told me that I probably saved Emily's life seven years ago by (quite accidentally, as it happened) revealing to Emily's mother that she was depressed and suicidal. After that, Emily got treatment (in the form of medication, and some therapy later), and she never did attempt suicide. I knew that Emily was getting treatment, and I knew that she was terribly angry with me for a certain postcard I wrote, which her mother read; however, I never knew that postcard was the one which alerted Emily's mother to her state of mind. In an odd, ironic way, knowing that I saved Emily's life (even though she ended up losing it anyway) made me feel better. It means that I'm not "just a pen pal;" I made a difference in her life.

Going to Emily's hometown and her memorial service was powerful for me; however, I miss her more than ever, because I kept on expecting her to walk through the door, and it's painful to realize that she never will.

In July 2000, tears still crawl down my face as I revise this page.

One of the lasting effects of Emily's death on me is a paranoia about people close to my heart but far away geographically. I'm afraid that something will happen to them, and I won't know. When Emily died, not only was she in Costa Rica, but I was on spring break in France at the time. My father, who found out about it in the newspaper, had no way of contacting me until I got back to the United States; he told me over the phone. All in all, as a way to find out, it could definitely be improved. The point is, now I've got a fear that I didn't have before.

12 March 2001

One year.

I'm wearing black because of the occasion, but I don't feel it. Today is just a day. I don't miss Emily particularly, at least not just because of the date, and I think she would want it that way.

Sometimes I miss her intensely. About five weeks ago I stormed and cried and raged and howled at the snow and sky which, mute, chanted to me at every moment that Emily was not there, was not anywhere. I felt like my heart was bursting, and I couldn't contain the pieces. I hadn't cried anywhere near that hard since Emily's memorial service.

But you know, I got over it... I don't mean that I'll ever forget what Emily means to me, but life goes on, eventually. She would want me to move on. So I will wear my black clothing and remember, but I will keep on living and enjoying life, all the same.

15 June 2001

Yesterday I got a package in the mail from Emily's mother. It contains a letter from her, pictures of me and Emily from my last visit, an unfinished compilation tape, and a postcard addressed but never sent.

The postcard seems to symbolize the breaking-off of Emily's life mid-sentence; she had addressed and stamped it and even added a tiny picture of her and two friends, but the letter is missing. She didn't get the chance to finish it.

Likewise the compilation (labeled "comp for Laurabelle") is unfinished; it only has six songs on it, which is probably why Emily hadn't sent it to me. Her mother found it among the tapes in Emily's room. The songs on the tape: Sinéad O'Connor "This Is to Mother You", Tori Amos "Playboy Mommy", Ani DiFranco "If It Isn't Her", Tracy Chapman "Fast Car", Smashing Pumpkins "1979", Simple Minds "Don't You (Forget About Me)". The title of the last song is, of course, ironic and symbolic (as if I could forget about her!), but I broke into tears while listening to the first song today. It seemed to be Emily herself talking to me, telling me I'd be okay, that she was there for me.

"For child I am so glad I've found you
Although my arms have always been around you
Sweet bird although you did not see me
I saw you"

Die Liebe höret nimmer auf.

("Love never ceases." I read it on a gravestone in the old graveyard in Nebel, on the island of Amrum, and loved the sound and the devotion of the words.)

Emily, I have wept for you. Occasionally, I still weep. It is strange to lose you, because in a way, I still have everything of you that I ever had. I have every single one of the letters that you sent to me, in Dallas and in France and in Massachusetts, and now I also have the letters that I sent to you. I can read them, and nine years of you are with me. All I have lost is the possibility of knowing more of you.

We were supposed to grow up together, have children together, and become old together. Even though we were always far apart, we were close in spite of distance. No matter where I went, you were with me, because our friendship didn't depend on physical proximity. And even now, my dearest Emily, I won't let you go. This is a letter to you, because I can still write letters. And you never wrote back much, anyway, the past few years. :-)

I weep not for your death, but for the way you died. There is a dreadful irony in the fact that you, who were always active against violence towards women and others, died in such a fashion. I cannot imagine how you felt. I cannot go where you have gone; I never could.

But I will remember you. I will take up the causes you proclaimed. In life you tried to get me involved; in your memory, I can do nothing less.

Further Links:

Emily's Homepage
Post by Emily on a philosophy course web discussion
Emily Howell in Memoriam (Lexington Shambhala Meditation Center)
Tori Amos Articles - April 2000

Press Releases from the Embassy of Costa Rica
March 15, 2000: Investigation of Two American Students Being Pursued
March 22, 2000: Investigation Continues
March 27, 2000: One Suspect Arrested
March 28, 2000: One Suspect Arrested & Possible Motive
March 29, 2000: Another Suspect Arrested

News articles from the Lexington Herald-Leader (Kentucky)
Wednesday, March 15, 2000: Lexington woman shot, killed at 19 in Costa Rica
Thursday, March 16, 2000: Police hunt man seen with two before they vanished
Thursday, March 16, 2000: Costa Rican paradise deadly
Friday, March 17, 2000: Costa Rica residents fear killings hurt image
Friday, March 17, 2000: School remembers, mourns slain student
Saturday, March 18, 2000: Family meets with investigators of slaying
Sunday, March 19, 2000: Costa Ricans show sympathy for slain Americans
Tuesday, March 21, 2000: Woman's body flown home
Friday, March 24, 2000: Friends, family mourn Emily Howell
Monday, March 27, 2000: Two suspects arrested in Costa Rica killings
Tuesday, March 28, 2000: Costa Rica police 'close to wrapping up' case
Friday, March 31, 2000: Costa Rican police had let suspects go twice
Thursday, January 25, 2001: Man sentenced in Costa Rica killings

News summary
More articles are available with a search on CNN

"In Memoriam" (about the memorial service at Antioch College)
Adrian Ogden's "Is the Net Real?"

I love you, Emily.

"You have always been there for me and brought to my life the gift of friendship.
Thank you for sharing all that is uniquely you."

Initially written March 2000.
Background gif made from Emily's jeans.

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