Left behind

The room was filled with people who loved him. People who worked with him. People who liked him. People who remember him.

I drove over, dressed more formally than is my custom, having managed to avoid stains from the juicy mango that I sliced for my child's "choice class". I guiltily talked on the phone, following up on the idiocy of traffic school from the day prior, and established that something, we are not sure what exactly, is in the mail. I imagined he would be there waiting. That I would arrive at the office, the fourth floor, not my floor anymore, and he would be there. I envisioned his open door, the door that still taunts us as we walk down the dark hallway.

I truly believed for a fraction of a second that he would be laughing with us, at the absurdity of one more event.

Instead I arrived and cut flowers. I wasn't on any steering or organizational committee this time. But that means very little. There are things that need to get done, and we do them, so that things come off perfectly, so that no one notices the seams. Everything neatly stitched together. No unseemly noises floating in to offend the sensibilities of the VIPs. Jocelyn and I cut, and cut, and arranged flowers. I am glad. I was not there to hear the things that were said at first. The ones that made some people seethe with fury. I was busy cutting, trimming, arranging, cleaning. It is safer that way. Everything in its place. Not a single piece out of line.

Then I listened to his brother. And his friends and everyone else that was touched by him. We were all touched by him, and now, it fades. We forget, just a little. We don't want to, but it is the natural process, and the immediacy of the ache diminishes. I imagine another scenario. The need for testimony. Who would come to my funeral, I wonder? What would they say? Or if the roles were reversed? What purpose would be served?

There is the eternal displacement. Someone is always away, at work, distant. They will return.

Julie calls me from Amsterdam, it is 1 in the morning. She is heading to Paris, to see her boyfriend and his family. "Are you ready for that?" I ask, with dread and trepidation in my voice. I don't want her to expose herself to the pain of rejection. I want to protect her from what I can't protect myself. "No," she replies. We laugh. Sadly. I ask her how her visit to her father in Canada was. I ask her about her mother. She bought a house in Amsterdam, she is what she is, says Julie. She doesn't ask for more.

"I have to go to the funeral now. It doesn't seem real." I try to comfort her, to cradle my friend from ultramar. I know the loss, the shock. Her friend, a girl she worked with, was murdered in her parents house in Nigeria. She muses that it is the kind of thing you read about in the paper, but not the kind of thing that happens to someone you know. Her father worked for one of the big oil companies. I sigh, knowingly. "So many people, you know?" One miniscule life touches so many contiguous lives...

How can we know the effect that we have? When does the sense of indignation go away? The sense of injustice. Why do people like el Generalísimo get to live out their entire life, fed, enrobed in riches, to die a natural death, and these innocents, so many innocents, die violently, abruptly? What fault of their own was it? Who will remember them? Who will remember me? Who will take my oceans of words and make some meaning from them all? Who will edit a life into a few short lines of a bio-bibliography? Who will not forget?

There are only so many people in this world that we get to have, to truly know. I didn't know him, not truly, and yet I did.
His sister, Kathy, marvels at the crowd, she says that they are the fortunate ones, that we are the ones to feel the daily tug of loss. She thinks about how every life has this sort of ripple effect, and asks herself how she can behave to have the most positive effect on those around her. I wonder that too.

I wonder if loving is ever really enough for other people. Or for ourselves. I return, and am drawn in once again by the power of the word. Poetry in motion, raw emotion, goodbyes.

Sometimes I wonder if every encounter, every life that floats by us, or that we float by, isn't just some sort of eternal beginning to the ultimate goodbye.