some thoughts on a memorial, and a decision...

on friday afternoon, pitt had a memorial service for professor white. class of 2007 section B was well-represented, as were many other friends and former students, and i think all of the pitt law faculty was in attendance. the service was very nice, very sad, very thoughtful, very important to everyone there.

i'm tremendously grateful for the efforts of all who were a part of putting it together. prof. white's wife, when she spoke, moved everybody to tears and smiles with her grace and sincerity. i can only imagine what she must be going through right now, and while i know it wasn't her motivation, i hope she knows how precious it was to those of us at the service that she allowed us to listen to her, to mourn her loss with her.

there was, though, a moment in the service when my fellow bloggers and i sat up a little bit straighter in the heinz chapel. it all started when one of prof. white's oldest friends and colleagues was speaking. he was talking about the number of students who had been affected by professor white. he said, "a student named emily said, 'he made me fall in love with the fourth amendment.'"

that "student named emily"? yep. that would be me.

when the chancellor of the university spoke, he also made mention of comments made online. comments made by my friends on their sites.

it was really rather amazing and special that words that my friends and i wrote had been incorporated in such a way into professor white's memorial service. those posts were things that we had all put up for ourselves, to share our grief with each other. i certainly never expected my posts to reach any farther than my own immediate experience.

and yet, this is the internet. and i'm not that naive. anything i write here is as close as the right permutation of terms in a google search. so, with that rather disarming reminder, i hereby bring to an end the short-lived diary of a certain 3x/week wardrobe-tracking. let's face it -- it was never really that interesting anyway.