After the Funeral
Aug 3 2010


After the funeral
I lost touch
with everyone who had known her.

Not that I knew them myself.
What connected us were the stories she told,
her wild spontaneous adventures.
And I imagine I would have liked them as well.
Or maybe not.
Maybe it was she who held us all in thrall —
the luminous star
holding all her friends in our separate orbits;
a red giant
a supernova.

I never made it to the funeral.
It came in the middle of things
2 time zones distant
where I had no one to stay with.
And nothing would have changed, anyway
— the final rite of passage
that leads into nothingness.

But now I realize it wasn’t just for her,
it was for us.
So we could reassure each other
she was important, remarkable
would somehow last.
To console her mother
that so many cared enough
to come.
To confer a sense of order
on something so senseless —
never closure
but at least a kind of ending.
Because ceremony
has a certain gravitas
— we hold each other up,
we are reassured
by the formalities.

No matter how much
I think of her
on a random Tuesday
like today
I feel I failed,
to send her on her way
to celebrate her brilliance.

The centre of gravity is gone.
We drift apart
into the cold darkness
of interstellar space.