The Two Kinds of Decay

Last Words

Wait — what would I have done if I’d been told one of my classmates would soon die of renal failure at twenty-five?

Would I have phoned? Visited? Brought a gift?

I was told that two men from my graduate program called me. One poet and one fiction writer. I don’t remember.

It is sweet to imagine the conversation they might have had before calling me. One of them asking the other if he’d like to come over and talk with their classmate, together, before she died.

Maybe afterward they talked with each other about how I’d sounded — as if I would soon die, or as if maybe I wouldn’t.

What would I have done? If it were, say, the guy from New Hampshire I’d always liked? I think I’d have called him.

What if it had been the girl with the glass eye, whose life seemed so boring, with her fiance and her car and her many hobbies? I’d have sent a card, maybe.

The stunning woman from Brussels — she visited. And brought a pile of magazines. But now that I think of it, she may have sent the magazines with someone else. It is hard to remember. I was blacked out, so anything seems plausible.

I like to think I would have said something to the dying person.

Would I have written about the dying person?

If I were a little in love with the dying person, would I have written little secret poems about this love? Would I have showed them to anyone, submitted them for publication?

Did anyone do that?

How did my classmates experience my death by renal failure in 1999?