INUVIK
Two years may have passed since Sasha Larocque-Firth died but she is anything but forgotten.

Sasha Larocque-Firth was killed at age 24 in a single-vehicle accident on July 6, 2014. The man driving the truck was sentenced this week. - photo courtesy of Heather Moses

"It's hard for everyone to go one," said her mother Deanna Larocque. "But I think everyone knows that she would want everyone to go on, be the best they can."

Larocque-Firth was killed at age 24 in a single-vehicle accident on July 6, 2014. The man driving the truck was sentenced this week for impaired driving causing death, among related charges.

For those who knew and loved her, the decision marked the end of more than two years of legal limbo and comes as a great relief.

Still, though Larocque-Firth was well-known, her mother hopes people will remember her for more than the tragic circumstances of her death.

"She believed in God. She loved her enemies; she didn't have any enemies," said Larocque-Firth's childhood best friend Heather Moses. "There's people who really could have torn her apart, and she wouldn't let them. She was friends with them."

Remembered as a free-spirit and creative force to be reckoned with, Larocque-Firth loved baking and had a style all her own. Her mother remembers a time when she was about 12 and was left to babysit some younger children, and she asked if she could bake cookies.

"We came back, and every bowl in the place - everything she could have used - was dirty," said Larocque. "But it smelled really good and there were a million cookies.

"Out of all the things we talk about - her love of art, her baking - she could create anything from nothing," said Larocque.

Her graduation from high school, and the preparation for it, was a production in and of itself. Larocque said she bought multiple dresses, even sending her daughter to Whitehorse with her father to get another dress in case the first one ordered didn't arrive in time. Her aunt, Bridget Larocque, was also enlisted to scour her southern city for a specific pair of shoes.

"She hated being like me but she was," said Deanna, recalling the story of how the dress needed some alterations when it arrived, and how she asked an acquaintance to take a look. "Her hands were just shaking as she was stitching, and I was just watching this woman, thinking what Sasha said out loud: 'you'd better not (mess it) up.'"

To cap it all off, Larocque-Firth was late getting to the ceremony and had to walk down the aisle to her seat at the end of procession, unsure if she was causing a disruption. Her natural grace and beauty allowed her to carry it off.

As kind as Larocque-Firth was, it was never false. When she had something to say, she would say it, calling it like she saw it.

"I never heard her speak bad of anybody," said Bridget. "Finding beauty in any situation, that was Sasha. It wasn't artificial, wasn't superficial."

Larocque-Firth graduated, and after leaving an ill-fitting program at Aurora College, re-enrolled in a pre-nursing program, and had plans to take business administration courses. Moses said she knew who she wanted to be, where she wanted to go, and that she wanted to find a better life.

"She had no fear," Deanna said, ruefully adding that she only found out her daughter had learned to crawl at five months when she fell down some stairs.

Part of a massive family, Larocque-Firth's death tore the fabric of the group. Her aunt, Margaret Larocque said she most missed the huge family get-togethers they had before the accident.

Deanna said she hoped the closure that comes with sentencing may change that however.

"We can move on, like Sasha would have wanted us to," she said.

"She loved her family endlessly - sisters, brothers, nieces, nephews, cousins, all of them. She always had a place for everyone."

Those who loved her have been saying goodbye in their own way for some time, each day bringing the renewed challenge of living with her loss.

"When she comes to me in my dreams, what I always told her, 'you're going to go places, my girl, and you're going to make it great'," said Bridget. "So Heaven must be just the most beautiful place. That was her talent."

She certainly brought light and happiness to those who knew her. Moses said she remembered one particular time they were together and happy.

"We were just sitting there and we started crying out of nowhere. We held each other's hands, and just looked at each other, and she grinned, and said, 'Wipe your face. let's just be happy.' I always think about that when I'm sad, how we were sad, and we held hands, and we were happy again," she said.

Moses and Larocque-Firth suffered through their own tragedy when a friend died when they were young, leaning on each other for support.

Later, when it came time to decide whether her best friend would have wanted a headstone at her grave, Moses recalled Larocque-Firth's own words at the death of their friend and repeated them to Deanna.

"'I'm not going to be there, I'm going to be someplace better,'" she said. "And she is. She's in our hearts."

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