One of my friends died last year. She was older and lived about to the average lifespan for a woman in the U.S.
She’s often in my thoughts. And I sometimes go through old text messages to see the exchange of ideas between us. To say I miss her would be an understatement, but these memories and desires serve as a reminder to “not waste it,” as they say. But what exactly is being wasted?
She told me she wanted to write one more book. Even so, as she told me this, she knew she was dying. Her kidney function was diminished, which affects heart function. And the sequelae of these infirmities affect not only the cardiovascular system as a whole but also the liver. Despite these, she was still sharp, even in her last days. But in her last days, I could see her waning energy.
I still have one of her books she wrote about 35 years ago in the nightstand next to my bed. It’s a good book. And sometimes I put her name in a search engine and see some conversation on Reddit where someone somewhere discovers her writing for the first time.
Near the end of her life, she was concerned about a few things. Leaving a legacy was one of them. Another was the fear of the unknown in the unavoidability of death that was looming closer. And in her last year, she would text me about her angina attacks to let me know that ‘this might be it.’ Foolishly, I asked if there was anything to be done, and in her own way, she said what she said, which ultimately meant, “no, dummy. I’m dying.” I miss her intellectual generosity as well as her ferocity. And we’d text back and forth and the severity of her ailments would ease up enough for me to visit her. Eventually, however, it was a text from her daughter a few days before Thanksgiving, letting me know that her mother — my friend — was gone.
In her last year, she gave away her books. The only reason an author does that is to prepare an exit from this world as if to sit in their own grave and bury themselves, taking on the trouble themselves so no one else would feel the burden. And I read some of the books I got, and in one of them looked to be a love letter — not to me. It was a rough draft. I always knew she could write — of course she could write, she had about 12 books with Signet, an imprint of Penguin Random House. But my god! I didn’t know she could write like that. And even as I think this, I feel like I see her in my mind’s eye and hear her, saying with a look of amusement, slight annoyance, and bewilderment: “Of course I can write like that!”
One thing I remember her telling me, which amounts to a human axiom, is this: if someone else can’t do it for themselves, you should do it for them. This wasn’t meant as a way to help someone evade responsibility for life or anything. Rather, in her case, if someone couldn’t imagine something better in a terrible world, then it was up to you to offer up your imagination for them. This axiom, I think, was what motivated her writing.
And so I think about these lessons from my friend and how that resonates with my life and my being. Ultimately, I want to be left alone. I want to be no one. I want quiet. And these aspects of desire have followed me for a long time, as evidenced by my actions in throwing away school pictures and keepsakes from my youth. There’s only a handful of pictures that I can think of, and I didn’t have access to them despite throwing away what I could. I suppose, in a way, my throwing things away is akin to burying myself. But it seems that with my friend’s lessons, I am to unbury myself, which is to say that I am to more fully engage with this world and other people. And if that is the case, then what am I to imagine? What is this sense of obligation that I feel?
I am me 