March 19th

My dear friend Kathy died last Wednesday. I spoke at her funeral yesterday. She had been in a coma for two and a half weeks, in a rehabilitation/care center for four weeks before that, and in the hospital several times before that. In all this upheaval of the past few months I just realized that I didn't even know the date she had died or even what the date was today. I hadn't gathered my wits about me enough to put all of this into the normal perspective of life. I just looked at the calendar a few minutes ago and for the first time it registered that she died on March 19. How could that be? It seems so bizarre and surreal. In one sense it is eternally distant from January which was when her problems became unusually intense and insurmountable and in another sense it's too insanely close. How can just a normal date in the year become a death date for someone you love? We've all heard that saying - that each year we unknowingly pass our own death date - a quiet anniversary in reverse of which none of us are aware. I find myself wondering what Kathy did last March 19. I assume we maybe talked to each other on that day. Neither of us would have even remotely thought that death would have taken her by this time the next year. Kathy had health problems that we knew would at some point be problematic and yes even fatal, but we all went on as if it were 10 or 15 years down the road.

March 19 is one month after my birthday. I did not think on that day that she would go one month later. At that point I was still hoping for rehabilitation. I find myself staring at the calendar. It reminds me of looking at the obituary section of the newspaper - two dimensional - matter-of-fact - one way communication - a smiling picture and blurb that conveys little or nothing of the recent events and those whose lives were forever changed by the death.

I haven't been able to really post since this situation became intense. I would sit down to write and nothing, absolutely nothing would come out. Writing seemed a very distant second to actual experience. And I still can't write about the details of helping a close friend die. It's too close and it seems a violation of something. I realize it's a matter of time and things will come out in bits and pieces and stages. I hope to post a tribute to my friend sometime soon. Tonight it's just a cognitive awareness that March 19 will never be the same - at least not for a long while. Next year as this date passes I will think to myself, "I can't believe it's already been a year." And the year after that, and the year after that.