By Beauty Damned

Ode to the Dead

Yay! Would you look at that? Another Friday. I feel guilty for spending an entire week anticipating this day. Strangely, feeling guilty in itself is a waste. Life is so short. We should be cherishing every second. But instead I spend much of the week saying "hurry up week. I want Friday, Saturday and Sunday." Those are the only days I want. The rest I can do without. But that's not fair. Because when we're on our last leg, we'll all regret it. We're going to regret sitting at desks, staring out windows at magnificent whether, or rain -- (It doesn't really matter. In the spring and summer everyone says "it's so beautiful I just want to be outside!" In the fall and winter they say "I just want to be at home curled up cozy and warm!" People can't be pleased) -- anticipating the weekend.

Honestly, Fridays can be rough though. They tend to be very busy because everyone has things they have to do before the weekend starts. A lot of hustle and bustle on Fridays. But then it's over and there is this huge sigh of relief. Phew. Wow. I get to stay up as late as I want tonight. I can sleep-in tomorrow if I want. But as you inch closer to Sunday, the anxiety sets in. Damn. I don't want to go back to work. And the cycle begins all over. I hate that kind of monotony. I love routine, hate monotony. Is that a problem? I really scold myself during the week when I find myself thinking or saying "is it Friday yet?" I am 25 years old, going on 26 in Sept. Time is flying by. I remember when I was 18, giving birthday cards to friends who were turning 25 and joking "shit, you're halfway to fifty! Ha-ha-ha." Doesn't seem so funny now, does it muthafucka. Now, as I think, "oh shit! I'm not 18 anymore, I am at least a quarter of the way through with my lifetime. Fuck," I simultaneously try to remind myself of how lucky I am that I’m still so young and hopefully have a lot of unknown adventure ahead. I know this is not news for many people, but here I am, having that quintessential mid-twenties crisis for the first time. I've always been obsessed with death and the human life experience, but I still dread getting old and still heartily exist within the "oh my god, I'm getting old and I'm going to die" phase, rather than the "I feel so content and I'm ready to go to the next level" phase. My mom says that doesn't happen until you're at least 40. But I heard a girl in her late twenties say it the other day and I was riveted.

I have a lot of really intense fears and thoughts about death. If you don't like reading about death, don't bother going further at this junction. My brother and I witnessed the tragic accidental drowning of our grandmother when we were very little kids. That was my first experience encountering death as a phenomenon. I didn't know about it before that day. The entire sequence of events has remained lucid in my memory for nearly 22 years. I remember the incident, my brother and I standing there as the panic unfolded, my mother leaping fully dressed into the swimming pool. I remember sitting on a little loveseat with my dad's arms around me, seeing the lights of the ambulance flashing around the room. I remember the days after. The feeling of hopelessness, loss and self-blame. (Amazing to think that even a four year old can sit there beating themselves up for something that is not their fault). I remember many teary nights, my dad always there, comforting me, saying, "it's okay honey. Everything is gonna be okay." I didn't go to her grave. I was too small I guess.

Death is hard. I didn't encounter it again until I was a teenager. My mother's stepdad died. Buddy. We loved him. He was a wonderful person. The knowledge of his passing obviously did not affect me the same way the death of my dad's mother had, though it was not a pleasant revelation by any means. My great aunt Esther died at 93. Not so hard to cope with. Then one day I came home from work at the age of 21 and there was a message on the kitchen table. It said "Diana. Mountain View Cemetery tomorrow." My friend Diana had been hit by a truck and killed. I went to her funeral the next day. It was terrible. She was young and beautiful and charitable and so many people knew her and loved her. Her boyfriend was crippled with grief. Everyone said a few words about her, and for the first time, I stood at a grave and cried the heaviest tears of sadness that I could remember feeling since I was that little girl being cradled by daddy.

Nick was the person who told me about Tyler's death. I was living with a couple girlfriends and Nick would stop by and visit occasionally. I'd known him for many years. He was slightly younger than me. He'd recently been in a car accident and had various run-ins with the law for relatively minor things. We represented him in a couple matters at our law firm. So he broke the news to me about the discovery of Tyler's body and I don't remember anything after that except laying in my bed, crying and staring out the window at a vibrant moon, hearing my roommate belting out "Midnight Sonata" on her piano.

Tyler was my second friend. Ever. My first friend ever was Uma. My mother was close friends with Uma's mother Carolyn and Tyler's mother Ruth. Uma was born in November, a couple months after me. Tyler was born on the first day of the new year in 1979. We were playmates as children, until my parents moved my siblings and I to L.A.. When I moved back to Oregon from California as a teenager, Tyler and I became close friends all over again. At 21 years old, on June 13, 2000, he died of an accidental overdose of liquid morphine. I wrote about his death in an email to Darcie, who was living in New Orleans at the time, and the following day, I read what I had written at his funeral. There was no holding back the tears and the grief. Many, many people attended the funeral and were genuinely hurt by his death.

Only a few months after I moved to New York, I spoke to my brother on the phone and he told me that Nick had shot and killed himself in Cantwell's, one of the local supermarkets. I suppose everyone privately speculated about the true reason for his actions, but the reality is that we will never know anything except that many of us witnessed his suffering individually and it all came to a terrible climax with that…and nothing more. Then Petie died. And Steve died. And Darren died. I knew Petie very well. He was a wonderful little trollface. Always loved Petie. He was a great person and no one who knew him will ever forget it. One minute he was there, walking up the path alongside Lost Creek Lake, the next minute, he was gone. Off the side of the cliff. No one ever knew if he jumped or fell. Steve was so young and musically talented and fought with cancer his whole life until it suddenly and unexpectedly overtook him one day. Darren scared me really bad when I was not in my right mind one time, but in general, he was a decent fellow. Certainly shouldn't have died from self-inflicted carbon monoxide poisoning.

Death is hard. Even the deaths of people you don't know. That's hard. The worst are deaths that are not self inflicted on any level. People’s lives literally stolen from them and their loved ones. You read about a serial killer and you think of the poor girls that he butchered and it makes you so sad, not just because he was a sick fuck, but because those people lost their lives in an untimely fashion. You think of the people who were killed in the Oklahoma City bombing or in Bath, Michigan in the 20s, or the World Trade Center in 2001, and it's horrifying, not just for the magnitude of the deed, but for the lives that were ripped away. We don't see many of the images of the murdered and maimed Iraqis and American soldiers in Iraq, and it's under-reported, but we know it's happening. Maybe if people spent a little more time thinking about the death and suffering that is occurring there and how badly it hurts to lose a loved one of their own, they would spend a little less time rooting for this war. Sometimes I think if people were more predisposed to getting in touch with the reality of the deaths and the vivid nightmares that are playing out there, that they would not be so supportive of this senseless, messy war. And those who do lose loved ones there and believe it’s a worthy sacrifice…It seems like they should think again -- of the life and the love that the dead have been deprived of at the hands of a greedy government and fruitless battle. And what they themselves have lost. And whether or not it's worth it.

Posted by Maria at August 20, 2004 07:54 PM | TrackBack