A good friend of mine died last week. There's no other way to say it, no way to make it sound less drastic or terrible or sad. She was the ex-sister-in-law of another good friend, but even though she had long since divorced that other friend's brother, they were still so close that they referred to one another as "sister." I wish I could Mmention her name, but I know she wouldn't like that, being the private sort of person that she was. But I can tell you some things about her. She was fifty two, she was blonde and pretty and smart, and she was a top notch hairdresser. She was obsessively neat when it came to folding her clothes and organizing her jewelry, she had a strong liking for Vanilla Coke, and she loved cats. Adored them, really. Her house was filled with their likenesses, and even her jewelry and some of her clothing bore feline images.
Obviously, t fifty two, she was much too young to die...but everyone says that about the people they lose, whatever the manner of their death. Still, as deaths go, hers was particularly tragic. It happened as the result of a car crash, one which occurred less than a mile from her house, just after midnight, as she and her boyfriend were returning home from a bonfire gathering at a neighbor's house down the road. The last time I saw her was a little over a week before, when she and her boyfriend stopped by my house whilst running errands. It was a random, unexpected visit, and I was busy with something that seems very unimportant now, but on the day she stopped by, it seemed important enough to keep me distracted during most of her visit. Despite the desultory nature of our conversation, as she was leaving, she paused in the kitchen doorway and said, "Give me a hug good-bye." Which I did....not knowing, of course, that it would be the last time I would ever hug her, much less see her physically in this world.
Anyone who has ever lost another person they loved already knows, without me needing remind them, that the hardest part comes not when that person dies, but afterwards, when the shock has finally started to wear off, and as it does, it becomes starkly apparent that life is...well...just going to go on. Charles de Galle, the late former president of France, once made the wry observation that "cemeteries are filled with indispensible people." I suppose that's true. At least in so much as people are only ever truly indispensible as long as they happen to be alive. After that, those who considered them indispensible somehow manage to find other people to replace them or to find other ways of accomplishing what the absent person can no longer accomplish for them. But, of course, with all due respect to the late Charles de Gaulle, when a loved one dies, it's not their indispensibility that we mourn, it's the fact that they have left a hole, however imperfectly shaped, or oddly formed, or inexplicably endearing. That...and the cold, frustrating discovery that people we love can die, and no matter how much we believe otherwise, our own lives will proceed without them. That's what I'm struggling with at the moment. The awareness that a beloved friend is no longer present in this world, but I am, and the sky is still blue, birds still chirp, the refrigerator is still keeping food cold, and the sadness I feel hasn't stopped me from thinking about how much I need to buy a new pair of boots for the winter. It doesn't seem fair, or right, and yet, that's the way it is, and always has been, and always will be. And the most I can do, in the face of such seeming unfairness, is write this post in which I can't even mention my friend's name. But I can tell you one more thing about her. I don't think she would mind. On that last day on which I saw her, she was feeling very proud because she was wearing a pair of denim overalls that she had owned since 1973...and she could still fit into them.
Skol!
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