Tetelestai
I picture her lying on stiff, taupe carpet. I've never seen the floor there, never seen the apartment at all, so this is an embellishment. An invented detail. But I can still see her. Her hair is a fan behind her, waves of chestnut and gold. When I see her she is always face-down. This means either that my vindictive imagination still takes some pity on me, or that I've already forgotten her face.
Which would make sense, since in the past two years I've seen her three times a year, each time in passing, bubbling by (all smiles) to drink or have coffee. She with her friends, I with mine. We made vague plans. To play cards and drink. Every time. And every time we didn't really mean it...or, I guess I didn't since I never followed through, and I assumed she didn't either. But she was always shy and unassuming and apologetic for her own existence so I suppose that she really might have.
And death is always this trite, I know. Death is always a pathetic series of abruptly ended sentences with too much punctuation and no sense. Death is always foolish, always wrong and always oh-why-did-it-have-to-be-her-she-didn't-deserve-this. Death is always dark flowers in chapels that smell like dust and women you've never seen before and suspect were hired just to be mourners saying "It's such a tragic loss." And it is. Or it isn't. "She's in a better place," or she isn't.
She is survived by her mother and her father, said the obituary, but it left out the hundreds of friends who had distanced themselves from everything but her Facebook. The dozens of comments that now litter her wall, saying "I wish we'd kept in touch." And all I can think of is that somewhere, out in the aether of cyberspace, an inbox is filling up with notifications and spam that no one will read unless maybe her mother, her ex-boyfriend, a random hacker dowses her password out of the fragments of memory. But why would anyone do that.
I see her on the ugly, cheap carpet. An alarm clock is going off somewhere behind her maybe. No one is there to turn it off. All that matters of the matter has been vacated. They found her because she did not show up to work. What if she had taken the week off? All those brushed-by stories in the newspaper of discarded elderly people discovered dead after a month because of the smell. My mind is maudlin and rank.
I have no right to feel so sad, and no right not to. I knew her as you know a bright butterfly that sits in your windowsill from time to time. Only the butterfly looks at you wistfully every time it sits there, looks at you like you might be a passable mother-substitute. It praises you for things you don't deserve praise for. It apologizes for daring to step into your light. And it makes you uncomfortable, over-burdened with the responsibility of it's happiness, wary to be entrusted with the beating heart of something so clearly fragile. And so you smile nervously and leave the room.
Such a sweet, sad thing with broken wings.
She cannot smile anymore, and I cannot bump into her. We cannot make vague plans we will not keep. Because she is lying on the floor, and no one is there. I cannot see her face, but I remember her smile. How completely joylessly blissful it was. How incomplete.
And if there is any meaning to "rest in peace," if there is peace to be had, if there is respite to be given, then I hope it is hers now. Whether the wide blank space of oblivion, or the gentle caress of some anthropomorphized wish, I hope it is hers. Because no one knew how to help her here. I didn't even know how to try.
I don't have beliefs about things like this. Some people find them comforting. I don't think I would. I don't think I could. I cannot stretch my mind to invent or incorporate a predicate clause to modify the noun-phrase of life. All I feel is the loss. The empty space that opened up like a hungry mouth where a person once was. And the vacuum-pull of that hole. The gravity. How can there be any meaning to a negative space? A lack. It is defined only by what is missing.
She is missing. There is a hole with her shape on the floor of her apartment, on the street downtown, in a booth at Walker's. There is a hole that I am trying to attach features to, trying desperately to paste a smile on. Trying to turn into what it replaced. And that is as senseless as trying to catch snowflakes on my fingertips. But what else is there to do.
I will go to sleep. I will try not to see her. I will try not to see the faces of all of my friends who are running themselves hard to early graves. I will try not to whisper their names into my pillow in the hoarse voice of desperation, trying to keep them alive by force of will. I will try not to memorize the long list of good people whose lives no longer intersect mine, who are one bad decision, one miscalculation, one shot of bad luck away from being another person I regret not loving better, living better for or simply calling more often.
I will try not to see her smile.
Which would make sense, since in the past two years I've seen her three times a year, each time in passing, bubbling by (all smiles) to drink or have coffee. She with her friends, I with mine. We made vague plans. To play cards and drink. Every time. And every time we didn't really mean it...or, I guess I didn't since I never followed through, and I assumed she didn't either. But she was always shy and unassuming and apologetic for her own existence so I suppose that she really might have.
And death is always this trite, I know. Death is always a pathetic series of abruptly ended sentences with too much punctuation and no sense. Death is always foolish, always wrong and always oh-why-did-it-have-to-be-her-she-didn't-deserve-this. Death is always dark flowers in chapels that smell like dust and women you've never seen before and suspect were hired just to be mourners saying "It's such a tragic loss." And it is. Or it isn't. "She's in a better place," or she isn't.
She is survived by her mother and her father, said the obituary, but it left out the hundreds of friends who had distanced themselves from everything but her Facebook. The dozens of comments that now litter her wall, saying "I wish we'd kept in touch." And all I can think of is that somewhere, out in the aether of cyberspace, an inbox is filling up with notifications and spam that no one will read unless maybe her mother, her ex-boyfriend, a random hacker dowses her password out of the fragments of memory. But why would anyone do that.
I see her on the ugly, cheap carpet. An alarm clock is going off somewhere behind her maybe. No one is there to turn it off. All that matters of the matter has been vacated. They found her because she did not show up to work. What if she had taken the week off? All those brushed-by stories in the newspaper of discarded elderly people discovered dead after a month because of the smell. My mind is maudlin and rank.
I have no right to feel so sad, and no right not to. I knew her as you know a bright butterfly that sits in your windowsill from time to time. Only the butterfly looks at you wistfully every time it sits there, looks at you like you might be a passable mother-substitute. It praises you for things you don't deserve praise for. It apologizes for daring to step into your light. And it makes you uncomfortable, over-burdened with the responsibility of it's happiness, wary to be entrusted with the beating heart of something so clearly fragile. And so you smile nervously and leave the room.
Such a sweet, sad thing with broken wings.
She cannot smile anymore, and I cannot bump into her. We cannot make vague plans we will not keep. Because she is lying on the floor, and no one is there. I cannot see her face, but I remember her smile. How completely joylessly blissful it was. How incomplete.
And if there is any meaning to "rest in peace," if there is peace to be had, if there is respite to be given, then I hope it is hers now. Whether the wide blank space of oblivion, or the gentle caress of some anthropomorphized wish, I hope it is hers. Because no one knew how to help her here. I didn't even know how to try.
I don't have beliefs about things like this. Some people find them comforting. I don't think I would. I don't think I could. I cannot stretch my mind to invent or incorporate a predicate clause to modify the noun-phrase of life. All I feel is the loss. The empty space that opened up like a hungry mouth where a person once was. And the vacuum-pull of that hole. The gravity. How can there be any meaning to a negative space? A lack. It is defined only by what is missing.
She is missing. There is a hole with her shape on the floor of her apartment, on the street downtown, in a booth at Walker's. There is a hole that I am trying to attach features to, trying desperately to paste a smile on. Trying to turn into what it replaced. And that is as senseless as trying to catch snowflakes on my fingertips. But what else is there to do.
I will go to sleep. I will try not to see her. I will try not to see the faces of all of my friends who are running themselves hard to early graves. I will try not to whisper their names into my pillow in the hoarse voice of desperation, trying to keep them alive by force of will. I will try not to memorize the long list of good people whose lives no longer intersect mine, who are one bad decision, one miscalculation, one shot of bad luck away from being another person I regret not loving better, living better for or simply calling more often.
I will try not to see her smile.