Bare details linger - Phone numbers and address books - Unhappy reminders. I received some sad news this week about the sudden death of a young friend. Her number, of course, is still recorded in my mobile phone. It is very hard to delete it. |
Friday, November 06, 2009
Haiku for the week
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4 comments:
So sorry to hear that, Froog.
Recently, in clearing up some clutter of long standing, I came across an address book which I evidently acquired sometime around age 14. Thumbing through the pages and seeing all those names -- nearly all elementary-school chums -- which had once meant something to me was emotionally complicated.
Sorry, Froog.
I remember hearing about a 23-year-old former student of mine who apparently jumped to her death from a dorm balcony. Very, very sad - and almost certainly not the full story.
Sorry to hear that, Stuart. A violent death is particularly disturbing. There were a few suicides on campus when I was working at Bei Shi Da, but no-one I knew personally.
My friend was struck down by ovarian cancer - shockingly sudden: she was dead within two or three weeks of being diagnosed. This stirs up a mixture of difficult emotions: a raging sense of injustice (she was such a thoroughly nice person; there are so many folks around who are not conspicuously improving the world by being in it, but she was) and a sense of dread (this is now the fifth person I know to die of cancer within the past couple of years; one can't help wondering just how toxic the environment here is).
I had the same situation a couple of days ago - a friend of mine died of liver cancer last week. Her funeral was on Tuesday and in the evening I sat quietly and looked at a few photos and wrote an "RIP" on my blog and then deleted her number from my phone. Doing that as part of an "event" in her memory made it easier - I was reassuring myself that I wasn't forgetting her by deleting the number.
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