On IMDb.com, there is a film short called “Orange Sarong”. In it, a businessman watches a woman in an orange sarong on a nearby boat. He lapses into a reverie and imagines he is meeting her, before he snaps out of it and realizes he has not, that everything was a dream. The woman in this film short is Samantha Krystle Clarke, in her previous professional incarnation as an actress.
Since hearing the news on Thursday, I have hoped to wake from a dream, like that businessman, and realize that none of this has actually happened. But it has: Sam is gone. The woman who was such a vibrant presence in my first-year section, the striking beauty who had hoped at one time to become a JD/MBA and an entertainment lawyer, is gone. This is no dream: she is not coming back to us.
Like many who knew her in 1L, I did not know how Sam was doing at U of T this year. I was busy – we all are busy – and the regular social rhythms of first-year are broken up into the atomized specializations of upper-year coursework. I did not bother to check up on her, see how she was doing.
I wish I had.
