What To Do When a Stranger Dies

Listen through the doorway as your co-workers talk about the accident. Kelly, the one in yellow stripes who's about to get married, tells the story. Kim says "Oh Christ" and bursts into tears. Try to make sense of the unfamiliar names, to figure out who died. Hope it's the stepfather or the best friend, but not the boyfriend. Anyone but the boyfriend.

Look at your monitor. Stop yourself from wanting to go into the reception area, to hear the story's missing fragments. Don't ask, "What happened?" Instead, wonder. Keep hoping it's not the boyfriend.

Pretend this tragedy is like one in a magazine, like the ones you used to read in your mom's Family Circle. They were called True-Life Dramas. When you need to get to the files, float to them like a zombie. Accept not knowing.

Reach for a folder.

The fat girl with the pig nose says, "That makes me sick. That makes me want to throw up." Nod. Ask why, because you feel you have to.

She tells it like the words are just words. "Wendy's boyfriend was in a car accident, and he died. And she doesn't know it yet."

Say "Oh" soft and low, a sympathetic moaning. Keep the other moaning, the feral howling, the real sound of pain, quiet. Let it bite at you. Lower your eyes and walk back to your desk, observing the tacit code of behavior that people observe when a tragedy has happened.

Sit down. Hate God. Hate yourself because you don't believe in God anyway, and this death means nothing. It is not part of a big plan, and nobody will get any rewards or learn great moral truths or go to paradise. Picture yourself screaming at a minister, "He will not go to heaven! He is gone! His body will rot! This is the end!" You scream this about your own boyfriend as you cry hysterically. Recall what they write in books about bereavement: Survivors may express their anger by "lashing out" at God, or even by renouncing belief. Practice telling the concerned people you know will pray for you to go to hell.

Think about the word "died." Hate the word.

Cry a minimal cry, only tears and running mucus, no sobbing gulping or irregular breathing. When a tear falls, makes a salty circle of wet on your desk, get embarrassed and wipe it up. Say, "It didn't happen to me." See Wendy at the hospital, finding out the news that her boyfriend is dead, and remember the dreams. All of them. The bloody figure slumped on the pavement on a rainy day on Lincoln Avenue, you walking by calmly, passing his mother but not looking, thinking about becoming a nun. The piece of paper next to the school phone that said "Dx: myocardial infarction" and the secretary that wouldn't tell you the truth, but you knew that it was him because he took a strange car out on the road at four in the morning. The deformed babies you held, one at a time, while you were waiting for him to come home, and he didn't.

Remember what you did not dream: the perpetual electrification of waiting, waiting by the phone for the news. Drowning in the not-knowing. Reasoning out the factors, travel route the time of day weather make of car alertness of driver sobriety of other drivers. Airbags. Seat belts. Luck, fate, God. Crying to exhaustion, to rawness, to uselessness. Throwing down pill bottles and collapsing in a space that was never small enough.

Remember all this, and dry your face with a tissue. Think about Wendy getting flowers and sympathy cards, stupid tokens, stupid things that are not her boyfriend, things that she does not want. You will burn them. And when they put your boyfriend away in the casket, you won't let morticians pancake makeup on his fair skin and blush his cheeks, like they did to your grandfather when you were fifteen, as if he were a grotesque stage corpse. Imagine yourself reaching for the boyfriend that could be sleeping, might be sleeping, and try to understand what it means to be dead.

Leave for lunch. Act normal, but do not smile. Hear the strains of trivial conversation--wedding plans, that is good pound cake, where is the letter opener. Think of a Robert Frost poem. And they, since they were not the one dead, turned to their affairs. Try to forget about it. At the cafeteria, order a turkey sandwich on wheat and feel sick. Doubt seriously that Wendy can eat.

Over lunch, decide things. Marry him. Go with him to Hyde Park. Teach middle school and live in a small, dusty apartment while he learns to be a chef. Don't look at other men. Don't leave him. And don't let him drive too much. If the news comes, go crazy like you expect to and let them sedate you. When you come to, put all his belongings in a fireproof, waterproof box. Establish a scholarship fund in his name. Cry a lot.

Go live with your gay friend who has an apartment in the city. He understands the dreams. Take turns cooking dinner every other night. Crawl in bed with him if you get really scared. Teach if you can. On holidays volunteer in soup kitchens and nursing homes. Wait for things to stop making you cry, like comedians he used to imitate and people on the street that look like him. When they don't, find a painless way to kill yourself and let your friend talk you out of it over and over and over again. Hold him. Cry.

Finish your sandwich and drink ice water. As the cold seeps down, try to give her boyfriend a last name. Fit together the pieces--he, the accident, the relationship. Wendy, whom you do not know. Wonder if she will grieve in her dreams.

Valerie Kann



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