Sometimes people die and
lots of people care but are not close
and somebody has to be the person
to call them up
and say,
I have bad news, the worst news, I’m sorry
I remember when I was called
with bad news, the worst news
I don’t know who
I would have expected
to call me
but I don’t think it was the someone
who did
I wonder who would call
the people who ought to know
if some morning I wasn’t in this world?
I wonder if people would get left out
and never know? Or find out years too late?
Sometimes I am afraid that
that has happened, and somebody
I hold dear and was once close to
is not in this world and I
grew too far to be alerted and
don’t know.
I wonder
how
to prevent
such a thing,
and I wonder if
such small isolations
are really just
what the world is made of.
This reminded me of part of a journal entry I wrote in my early 20s, when a good friend of mine had just committed suicide, about the flipside of this feeling:
“i think the strangest part…one of the first things i did, about an hour after i found out, was started calling people. all his friends and people he was close to, people he knew, people he gamed with on a regular basis. and letting them know. and there are a few of his friends who should know, but we can’t get to them. alex is in the middle of finals and nobody wants to tell him until they’re done. eric’s at boot camp. robbie’s in a mental hospital. sarah’s number is unlisted. a few others, people simply don’t know where they are.
and i realized, after a while, the reason i was so frantically calling and trying to make sure everyone knew…was that i just kept thinking…there are these people out there, friends of billy’s, whatever…and in their realities, he still exists. as far as they’re concerned, he’s fine and dandy, snug as a bug in his bed at home. but in our reality, he doesn’t exist anymore. and i need to make all of these realities align, because otherwise my mind just can’t understand it.”