How Visiting Lake Piru Gave Me Perspective on the Death of Glee’s Naya Rivera

How Visiting Lake Piru Gave Me Perspective on the Death of Glee’s Naya Rivera

Lake Piru, at its most beautiful

As I stand on the side of the road that overlooks Lake Piru, there is one thing that strikes me about this reservoir — it is peaceful. The water looks shallow. It barely ripples as the pontoons and the kayaks move in circles. It is a scorching Sunday, but a quiet one. The hills around me are flat and rolling, streaked with black sediment. I’m far off the 5 Freeway, tucked into the mountains, Los Angeles behind me and the expanse of the Central Valley in front of me. The sky is clear. I lean against the short fence and watch the sun cast rays on the water.

At my feet are two memorials. One is for Naya. There is a ten foot banner signed by fans who had held a vigil at the lake. Laminated letters are taped to the fence. The store-bought flowers that people had put down at this site, once vibrant, had withered and died. My bouquet of new red carnations was placed next to the dried out bulbs of the others.

Briefly, I wondered who would pick up all of these flowers. I felt the same way when I dropped off a bouquet at an intersection in my home town — a girl from my high school had been killed in a hit-and-run. I didn’t know her well, but we had been in similar circles. When I had crossed the busy street, two months after her death too late, I saw that all of the flowers were crispy and brown. But I had left a bouquet anyway. Flowers die so quickly.

The memorial site above the lake

The second memorial on the lookout point over Lake Piru is a small cross. A unnamed 28-year-old woman from the area had committed suicide six years prior. It wasn’t until later that I would find out that the woman had drowned herself. Wikipedia provides the name of every person who has died on that lake except for her.

A family of four pulls up behind my car and climbs out to get a look at the view. The young son, trailing behind, sees the flowers and the notes and does the sign of the cross. It looks instinctual, the way he does it — as if this boy knows death means the same thing for everybody.

When I am 12 years old and first watch Glee, I am home alone for the first time. Through a web search, I learn how to boil water and make myself a pot of pasta. Fusilli. I feel free, like I could be by myself for the rest of my life.

Naya Rivera as Santana Lopez, pictured with Amber Riley as Mercedes Jones

If I could have met Naya, and said something, I would have said,

“Hi, it’s really nice to meet you. Thank you for playing Santana.”

And she’d look at me, hungover as fuck in the frozen food aisle at Whole Foods, and she’d say, “Thank you, that’s really nice of you.”

In her head she’d be thinking, Damnit, not again.

But she’d be secretly happy — she was just trying to get some food for dinner for her son, and when it came to her kid she hated when people bothered her — but she liked how this conversation was going. It felt normal.

And I’d smile at her, the biggest smile in the world, and say thank you have a good day bye. Then I’d grab my potato chips and go to the checkout aisle and I’d go very quickly back to my car and bite my knuckles and maybe cry and then call everyone I know. It would have been embarrassing, but I would have held it together until I couldn’t any longer.

Instead, I stand at Lake Piru, a pit stop on my way up to Northern California, and I think about what I want to eat for lunch and I think about what was on Naya’s mind when she was driving this same, winding road up to the lake and I think about how three days after she had gone missing her family and the cast of Glee had driven up this same road — what were they thinking then?

I may never get to ask any of these questions. But some things, I think, are better left unanswered. Like how I’ll never know the name of the young woman who killed herself in the waters of Lake Piru — she was loved by someone, too. I saw her name written on the cross, but, thinking about Naya, I had forgotten what the girl’s name was.