Gone, Another One

~

Even in death, you are most like yourself—swift to flee the ordinary.  I heard the news that you were gone while in the middle of chaos, trapped among the hoi polloi clamoring to fulfill their consumer desires. It was news delivered through the wires, quick as can be, just a few lines of text in a forwarded message. An electronic rumor, as though speed mattered more than fact. My first feeling was numbness, a cold hand clasping my heart. And then, I thought it very apt that news of your leaving us should come through like this, quick and mysterious, like a close-held secret released only to a few, or how very much like you doing  a French leave from a party you’ve deemed ripe for abandonment.

Tina, my friend whose dark, mischievous glance always amused me, I regret not seeing you one last time. It is, perhaps, your design that we do not see you anymore, so that we may remember you as you were, in college: young and beautiful, the smoky voice, those dimples, the long dramatic swish of black hair, legs for miles.

I will miss you, Tina. Our bond was words, the stimulating verbal repartee, witty volleys back and forth that leave us laughing, always laughing.  How we love to poke fun at ourselves—how smart we were, how articulate, how powerful in our ability to cut to the core. And now, even with all the words at my command, I do not feel up to the task of writing about you, so I will stop.

Instead, I will put up this Sylvia Plath poem (she who knows best about cutting to the core), to let that which is out there, the vast but now incomplete universe know how I wish you could have stayed here a little bit longer.

~

Denouement

Sylvia Plath

The telegram says you have gone away
And left our bankrupt circus on its own;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The maestro gives the singing birds their pay
And they buy tickets for the tropic zone;
The telegram says you have gone away.

The clever woolly dogs have had their day
They shoot the dice for one remaining bone;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The lion and the tigers turn to clay
And Jumbo sadly trumpets into stone;
The telegram says you have gone away.

The morbid cobra’s wits have run astray;
He rents his poisons out by telephone;
There is nothing more for me to say.

The colored tents all topple in the bay;
The magic sawdust writes: address unknown.
The telegram says you have gone away;
There is nothing more for me to say.

This is the fourth friend I’ve lost to a kidney related illness.  Universe, I get it I get it. Stop hitting already.