may days
dear readers (if any are left)--I've been gone some time, forgive me.
Michael's death and its circumstances occasioned a lot of thinking and talking and writing, but this blog wasn't the place for those conversations. So for awhile I had little to say here. NPR had a short piece about him recently, and my friend Sasha wrote this memorial for Brown's alumni magazine--it's the one that best captures the person I knew.
Several of us went up to Massachusetts for the funeral--the New Yorkers took the train up to New Haven the night beforehand, and piled into cars with our classmates-turned-law students in the morning. We drove to Medway in a caravan of friends, and there was something fitting and comforting that we came together. So many familiar faces--twenty or twenty-five from our Oxford cohort alone. Some I hadn't seen in years--fellow rowers from the boat club, activist friends, members of my scholarship year. Many I'd lost touch with, or kept only in the barest contact online. They're doing amazing things, practicing law and delivering babies and teaching undergraduates and writing books. A surprising number are married, now. As someone said to me, we should have met again at one of the weddings; not for this.
As that memorial ended, we heard, another was beginning on the other side of the Atlantic, at St Antony's, and more friends were gathering there. J. read a short remembrance he'd sent to be read aloud at that service, in which he noted that the JCR had done two immediate things in Michael's memory--lowered the college flag to half-mast, and put Guinness on half-price in the late bar. That's a tribute he'd have liked--as is the scholarship created in his memory to help Brown students conduct independent research abroad.
When a friend wrote to tell me about the flag, I found myself thinking of the last time I remember it flying low, though surely there must have been other instances in between. Michael was the third person I knew and liked in Oxford who has died suddenly. So John and Meeto have also been on my mind, these past few weeks. All three of them were remarkable, deeply gifted people, who burned very brightly in their short lives. I've been thinking about how they spent their time in this world, and how I'm spending mine.
Michael's death and its circumstances occasioned a lot of thinking and talking and writing, but this blog wasn't the place for those conversations. So for awhile I had little to say here. NPR had a short piece about him recently, and my friend Sasha wrote this memorial for Brown's alumni magazine--it's the one that best captures the person I knew.
Several of us went up to Massachusetts for the funeral--the New Yorkers took the train up to New Haven the night beforehand, and piled into cars with our classmates-turned-law students in the morning. We drove to Medway in a caravan of friends, and there was something fitting and comforting that we came together. So many familiar faces--twenty or twenty-five from our Oxford cohort alone. Some I hadn't seen in years--fellow rowers from the boat club, activist friends, members of my scholarship year. Many I'd lost touch with, or kept only in the barest contact online. They're doing amazing things, practicing law and delivering babies and teaching undergraduates and writing books. A surprising number are married, now. As someone said to me, we should have met again at one of the weddings; not for this.
As that memorial ended, we heard, another was beginning on the other side of the Atlantic, at St Antony's, and more friends were gathering there. J. read a short remembrance he'd sent to be read aloud at that service, in which he noted that the JCR had done two immediate things in Michael's memory--lowered the college flag to half-mast, and put Guinness on half-price in the late bar. That's a tribute he'd have liked--as is the scholarship created in his memory to help Brown students conduct independent research abroad.
When a friend wrote to tell me about the flag, I found myself thinking of the last time I remember it flying low, though surely there must have been other instances in between. Michael was the third person I knew and liked in Oxford who has died suddenly. So John and Meeto have also been on my mind, these past few weeks. All three of them were remarkable, deeply gifted people, who burned very brightly in their short lives. I've been thinking about how they spent their time in this world, and how I'm spending mine.
posted by kitabet at 8:11 PM
2 Comments:
I'm so sorry. To lose three dear friends and obviously terrific people, all so young. What a lot of life's cruelty has touched you in a short time. Your words do them proud.
dear e,
Am glad you're back - you have been missed. I'm sorry to hear about even more losses. Hope this June is better than May.
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