For the Curious

We found out that it was a heroin overdose. No one knows whether it was intentional or not. I feel sorriest for his former roommate, a French guy who moved out at the beginning of this term because of “differences.” Apparently he was a pretty antisocial guy: treated the people on his floor rudely, didn’t wash his dishes, that sort of thing. I talked to a German girl on the bus this morning who lived on his floor, and she said he must have been pretty lonely, but always looked perfectly healthy, no like a junkie at all. Appearances can be deceiving.

Death is such a strange thing. I have seen so much of it, yet I have felt far more affected by the living than by the dead. Even when my old dance teacher Jean died, I only cried a little when her daughter (and my more immediate dance instructor) Darcy told me that she had read and enjoyed the letters I sent everyone from college. I wasn’t crying over her death; I was crying over the fact that I had actually impacted her life, and someone else knew about it. I can cry for people I love who are living, but somehow, I cannot cry for them once they are dead. Or perhaps the most important people to me just have not died yet. Maybe I am that lucky.