I can’t help it. I don’t trust these people that say you’re dead. I keep imagining you lying face down on your bathroom floor. What did you look like? I wish I had a picture of how you lay, the expression on your face. Were your eyes open or closed?
No, that wouldn’t convince me. I can too easily imagine you getting up from that floor. I can see the long vein running from elbow to wrist, the definition of your whole arm revealing itself, as your muscles took on the weight of your body. You lay on my living room floor so often, I have videos in my head of you standing up—exactly what I want you to do right now.
Stand up, Sang. I just need you to stand up. You’re fine. I know you are. Sure, you died. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to see you anymore, right? You’re still going to come over on the weekends? You’re still going to have love and advice for me. It isn’t a question in my mind. I can still call you to check up on you.
You simply won’t have much to say back. Like a book, you’ve said everything you’re going to say. Sure, there’s an end. But that doesn’t mean I can’t go back to all the pages you gave me to read. Right? … Talk to me, Sang. You always have something to say, something brilliant and funny and endearing. Stand up, Sang.
Sang. Sang lost weight last year. Sang reconnected with himself last year. He revealed things to himself and to Charles and to me that he said he hadn’t ever wanted to think about. He loved a woman last year. He didn’t want to go out on New Years Eve because the roads were dangerous with drunk drivers—last year. I don’t know what he experienced this year. I haven’t seen him. He’s dead. It’s what everyone keeps saying. Sang’s dead. They keep telling me. I keep saying it. I can’t help but say everything I can about him. It seems others can’t stop themselves either as they offer their words. I love the words, warm and soothing like a long, hot shower. Words haven’t made me feel this good in months.
Lend meaning to a meaningless situation. Death for humans is the same as it is for stars. Our matter and meaning flows from us into our universe. Happily, we live in an era where the matter and meaning of Sang’s life can exchange phone numbers and email addresses. We’re forced to accept our collective being can never be reconstituted, but we can exchange words that allow us to feel whole again. Lend meaning to a meaningless situation.
∞
Commentary