Ars moriendi, part 1

The art of a good death is a good life

Today I went to text you a link to this fantastic piece of writing in the New Yorker—the kind everyone pretends exists in every magazine issue but does not (you and I always laughed about this). It is one of those pieces of writing that unfolds in complete originality and sends, cherub-like, arrows into our ongoing, twenty-some-odd-year conversation about witnessing, storytelling, memory, and voicing our being. I wanted to text you the link so we could talk about it during our weekend phone date. Then I remembered you died. Ten days ago, I went to show you a photo of your dog meeting your Dad, how she made him smile in that impossible circumstance we were in, then I remembered the circumstance was that you died. Yesterday I told you twice, aloud, that I keep forgetting that you died.

"Forgetting" is not really the word because I have never, not for one second, forgotten that you died. There was a simultaneity between  "E. is dead" coming off the phone and you being dead becoming part of my bones. I was not told you were dying but that you were dead. One single moment seared in time, not two points in time that I might choose between. That you died is information made flesh, my flesh, instantly. It makes it forever too late. It makes any equivocation vulgar and cruel. It makes brutal honesty as necessary as the air I breathe. I cherish the word “dead” for its distinction, the better to help my mind understand "that which is distressing may nonetheless be true."

"Dead" sounds like a nuclear bomb that is also the last puzzle piece.

"Dead" sounds like a cannibal that reconstitutes the world in a single bite.

Writing is a backward scramble now. Writing used to pull me into the future. Physically, I wrote across the page, from the left, the beginning to the right, the end. Emotionally, I wrote from here, where my words arise, to there, where they arrive. And usually, if they meant anything to me, they would arrive at your door, and you would tell me if they were any good. If I was any good. Writing now goes nowhere. My words stand up and pretend to believe in themselves. Just like me. I stand myself up, and pretend to believe I'm whole. Occasionally, I even pretend to have the same questions as everyone else. How could this happen? What do I do? But I don't really have questions. You died.

I want to call, tell you that if equanimity, that Buddhist quality I’m meant to hone, is the acceptance of (your) death in (my) everyday life, I’m fucked—and hear you laugh that laugh.

Then I remember you died.