Dear Dani,

I have a blue CD case of yours.  It rests on the floor of my aging Honda and contains the remains of your CD collection - after your friends came and took the titles they knew or recognized.  Here are all the obscure things you once listened to.  Here is Herbie Hancock from the 60s, the Beastie Boys and music from the Andies.  There are live performances from local acts that must have impressed on you, and there is a carefully labelled CD of ballroom dance tracks. 

The writing on the disks you made is sometimes in careful cursive swirls and sometimes in bold thin block letters.  You fill in the characters with color, make little notes and swirls and personalize this little world of shiney discs in a way only Danielle can.
 
As I drop these little discs in the player, hearing the things on them that you were the last person to hear,  I think that the CDs left were not what's left over, but what was truly personal.   These aren't real popular artists or shiney CDs from the store for the most part.  They represent the fringes of your taste where you left the mainstream and listened to things that were not all that popular but were more unique.

I am now the last friend of yours to get your old CDs.   Unlike your other friends I didn't pick and choose those CDs that held memories of you in my past.  I never knew you before.  These CDs came with the case and tell me about you and your life.  These CDs serve to give you some life in the present and therefore I will cherish them.    

(Danielle, you took ball room dance classes?)

All my love and respect,
Russ~