Far Too Soon

On the timeless random nature of who dies when

Dreamy sky somewhere over Bermuda. Photo: KOD

My friend Julie says that only the good die young.

We’ve known each other since the fourth grade and listened to Billy Joel belt out those lyrics, singing along with no idea what the hell any of it had meant, swiveling in the Eames chair by the turn table.

I’m pretty sure she knows that her theory has holes; after all, her dad, who was a mensch among mensches, was ninety-one when he died last year.

And yet my dad was just thirty-seven when I found him on the purple shag carpet, those Billy Joel lyrics like a big caption balloon, the darkest of clouds really because who dies at thirty-seven, after all? That’s just crazy.

Everyone who packed the church that October day agreed; all of us had been robbed. He was the sun and filled every room.

Yesterday, Julie shared news of Mike, a mutual friend from the old neighborhood. She and Mike had remained close. Fifty-nine doesn’t feel ancient like we thought it was when we were organizing the junior prom and he was our fearless editor of the school paper. Fifty-nine today feels like we got robbed.

Before night fell, news of more robbery: My friend Obi, the menschiest of all, his beloved Amy, mother, scholar, Gen X warrior princess.

I sat in the tub, thinking about how the day began: Picking strawberries with Shelley on a hillside. A long day of deadlines and to-do lists and sundry annoyances. And yet, the gift of another day.

I woke up just after five, the robins making a racket and well, I couldn’t stop thinking about Mike and Amy. I will get on the mat shortly and practice on their behalf, sending spiritual cookies over the transom, and I will bend my knees, one at a time, and move my hips back, like Maud teaches us.

When we are among the living, it is so easy to forget how miraculous it is to still be here. And yet, it never stops being cruel when it is all taken away, when there is still so much that we want to do.

“One day at a time,” my brother John, twenty-eight months sober, says whenever we speak, almost like a mantra. For him, it’s one more day that he hasn’t touched the stuff that makes him do bad things.

But perhaps sound advice for the whole package, for all of us: We just don’t know what tomorrow brings.

It feels cliché. Until it kicks you in the teeth.

We’re all gonna die but not because Joni Ernst says so.

We’re all teetering, even on a good day.

All we got is right here right now and so let’s dance like dorks when the pasta is boiling and eat all the strawberries and look up at the swirls in the sky as day morphs into night.

This is for Mike. This is for Amy. This is for all of us. We are among the living. Let’s do them proud.

xokod