How Does It End?

Time to write an obituary for my friend Sooz. Even though the papers charge for it, it seems important to get the word out, to get the damn word out when someone you know had juice, had moxie, had issues, had breath, dies. But every time I tried over the past two days, my mind boinged away from it, like hitting a trampoline. Even though I wrote a romance novel about her once, which she and I are the only people that ever read. Even though I love to write.

Ever tried to write an obit? I tried to talk my Mom into writing her own, a few years before she died. She didn't go for it. Thinking about dying was involved, somehow, and she wasn't going there.

My mom wanted to die in her sleep. Translation: I'd say she probably wanted to have had a lyrical day, visits from the great-grand kids and their parents, a fond, familial meal with rare roast beef, artichokes, a splash of wine, chocolate for dessert, witty conversation, and then off to dreamland. Forever. Instead, she got a bladder infection, was briefly hospitalized and then just slept more and more, breath rattling, head back, antibiotics and Ensure percolating and then, after too agonizingly long, she stopped breathing.

And then there was the rest of it. Living after she was gone. Why didn't I ever tell her how valuable she was to me? How much I, just as much as she, depended on our daily 4:30 p.m. phone calls? How nice it had been to be so approved of when I was a coltish, gawky adolescent? How imbued I am with her sense of style, even though, in later years, she gave in to polyester pants? How hard is it to let go of stuff that your parent no longer remembers?

Fine, stop dissembling. I tried, earlier today. I came up with nouns to describe my dear, dead friend: Advocate. Optimist. Fighter - but then I changed it to Warrior, which says it better.

Dylan Thomas said "Rage, rage against the dying of the light" and that is exactly what my friend Sooz did, right up to the time when she just couldn't, anymore.