Eulogies

There's an old joke that most people fear public speaking more than they fear death, so they'd rather be the one in the coffin than the one delivering the eulogy. I'm not delivering a eulogy tomorrow, but I am going to speak a few words about a wonderful woman whom I've known since I was 13. When I was first asked to do this, my first jolting thought was that I had no idea what I could say....about a woman I had known well, spent weeks with, gotten blindingly drunk with, argued with, walked away from, laughed at, missed, held in my arms, carried her tiny body aloft, danced with, thrown things at, cried with, cooked for, and picked up from the floor. How preposterous to think that if we're suddenly stopped in mid moment and asked if we could put together three paragraphs about a loved one, we feel as though we have nothing to say. Maybe it's just me, but I find it altogether too easy to clunk through life like an automaton, understanding on a very superficial level how different people fit into our lives, the roles they play, when we will next see them and what we will say to them, do with them but not really reflecting on who they are. And then, maddeningly, at a moment like this when you lose someone, you suddenly find yourself not even understanding what you've lost until somebody asks you to verbalize it. And then in the verbalizing, you discover that you've lost far more than you knew -- that you failed to appreciate what you had when you had it. And you're left clutching at straws, clawing at the side of the drain, trying to console yourself by convincing yourself that this person will alway live on in your mind and your memory -- the throaty laugh, the glinting eye, the barbed wit. But no matter how hard I try to convince myself that only a body has been lost, that all of its effects still exist, that this woman, for example, helped to shape my brother into the magnificent and fascinating human being that he is, I know that it's a bit like the rock dropping in the pond. She's still sending out ripples, but they become shallower, more dispersed, more difficult to discern with every passing moment. Soon, no matter how hard I strain, I won't be able to fully convince myself that I can really sense them -- that they're real to me. When I was much younger, I used to play a game with a friend of mine -- best accompanied by hallucinogens of some kind -- in which we played music but slowly turned down the volume until it was just barely audible. Pick the threshold just right and you can no longer be sure whether you're hearing music or imagining it. My head's still full of Jan, but the volume's ratcheting downward and there's nothing I can do about it.

Virtual shmirtual. No matter how much fun I have with my new toys, we're built to press flesh against flesh, feel the warm wetness of each other's skin, let our living breath raise tiny follicles of tingling pleasure. That all stops when we die, no matter what high thoughts we conjure to convince ourselves otherwise.

While I'm remembering Jan tomorrow, looking out across a sea of mourners, not one thing I could possibly say, no matter what high thoughts of consolation I might be able to mutter (if I can get a single squeak of remembrance past the throat lumps), we'll all really be paying attention to those ripples and wishing for the real thing.