!D for Death
---
agk's phlog
18 June 2021 @ 0008
---
written on x61 while Evy sleeps on the couch
after we got home from North Carolina
---
"I don't want any more surgeries," cousin Bryan said.
Evy sat on his bed, braiding my hair. Cousin Donica
sat in a comfortable chair.
When Bryan's best friend overdosed and died at
Christmas it was finally too much. Bryan stopped
getting out of bed. Fuck it. Too many surgeries, too
many deaths. Cliff was his friend since they were
four. They grew up together, lived together. They're
brothers.
Another death woke Bryan from his depression. He
reflected with us yesterday, the longest, most heart-
to-heart talk we've had since childhood. He knows how
to set judgment aside and see people as they are.
Real young he refused the life of a farmhand for a
different life. After all the surgeries he's carless
in a house in the fucking fields, but alive.
I'll see more of him and my aunt. I want more of them
in my life. Our visit was so easy, but too short.
In April when Anna drove out of town and shot herself
in the face dead, Evy said, "Damn. Suicide season
started early this year."
Bugz' boyfriend who works for the fire department
confirmed. Suicide season started early this year.
An ER nurse was admitted to my hospital this spring
when she couldn't handle them all. To our roommate,
Anna's best friend, I said, "Don't you follow her."
Once, Anna and I got my 1994 Chevy 1500 pickup truck
stuck pretty far down a four-wheel track in Jackson
County at midnight in a monsoon. Soaked to the bone,
we giddily made out, shivering. I told Bryan. He said,
"That's what you call a Tuesday."
This week is the first I've seen grandpa since grandma
died in hospice. We memorialized her as best we could
on Zoom, months after she died. Grandpa's knees hurt
him. He's still gentle. He still drives like a maniac.
Grandma's dead but she's still with him.
They found Happy dead on his bed, eight hours after he
died (from a heart attack I guess), arms and legs flung
out like he was in the middle of a jumping jack, eyes
wide open. I was at Jimmy's house borrowing his trailer
when I heard about it and the motorcycle wreck that
killed another of Jimmy's lifelong friends.
A lot more died, of course. This year, last year, every
year. I'll die. You'll die. You remember to love and
cherish the living. You pick up as much of the undone
work of the dead as you can. Sometimes, if you're Evy,
you sit in the roots of the sycamore tree.
If you're aunt Cindy and cousin Bryan, you go on and
live your life in a way I admire, with rural blue-
collar generosity, humility, good humor, intelligence,
integrity, and kindness. If you're me, you sit with
those you've got and tell some good stories about
whoever you miss.
Laughter makes living easy. I hope they tell some good
stories about us all when we're gone.
