All poems used with Amanda's permission. Shortly before her death, she asked me to please take custody of them if anything ever happened to her.
If these poems moved you, feel free to email Mary Withers, Bill's mother and Amanda's eternal friend.
More poems may appear, as I find time to transcribe them. If you are thinking of taking your own life... don't. Just please don't.
Understand, if you understand nothing else, that this is not a pro-suicide site. Yes, I know their story is very romantic, in a Shakespearean way, but we still should not have lost either of them. If you had known them, you would know that they were both poised to make a much greater contribution to this world than this page and this incredibly sad love story. I believe that they were here on Earth to be more than negative examples for the rest of you!
Also, some of you have asked me how, with Amanda's insight into the pain of suicide, she could have done the same thing. She understood, better than anyone else on Earth, the devastation it leaves behind. I don't know the full answer, but I suspect that she felt that, if he was dead, she deserved to die, too -- even though she knew how badly suicide wrongs those who love you.
In the last message she left me on my answering machine, she was sobbing to me to pray for her, that she not go to Hell. She was so tired, so frightened, so broken. I do not know for sure what the Afterlife holds - whether it's nothing, or heaven and hell, or purgatory, or some huge cosmic Disneyland. But I do not think that any Godlike Entity who understands us or cares for us could ever send Amanda to any Hell. Detention, maybe, but not Hell! :->
All I know for sure is that this Earth is much less like Heaven than it used to be, now that she and Bill no longer walk upon it.