This weekend, a friend and I were at the Toledo Museum of Art. I was checking my phone because something was going on with my beloved kitty, Rudy Lu, and I was hoping for an update. Instead, there was a voicemail from my friend Matt’s girlfriend, whom I’ve never met, asking me to call her. She could have been inviting me to a surprise party for Matt, or something else secretly celebratory, but it didn’t seem likely. Leaning against a wall outside the women’s restroom, I dialed her number. As you have most likely guessed, Matt was dead.
I had planned on writing today’s newsletter about aging, something each of us is doing even right in this very moment. Sometimes, for great swaths of time, the aging is more palpable than others. And between Rudy and my doggie Delilah and me, there’s a lot of it going on over here! I had thoughts about chronic health challenges and how expensive and time-consuming being unwell whilst simultaneously getting older can be and the ways in which parts of The Last Showgirl really resonated with me and a conversation my ninety-eight-year-old dad and I had over lunch about what happens when you die and much more. I was going to somehow elegantly braid these altogether and produce eloquent and meaningful insights on aging—eloquent and meaningful insights that I need!
But then Matt died.
I met Matt around when I turned forty. He worked at Lil’ Frankie’s, a restaurant I frequented in the East Village—and by frequented, I mean ate there pretty much every night of my life, other than when I ate at Frank’s. We quickly became friends—and by friends I mean we saw each other every single day. We were both writers, and began working on a screenplay together which, if I recall correctly, was pretty good. We’d spend hours at each other’s apartments during the day and then see each other again at night when I turned up at Lil Frankie’s for dinner.
Matt had those classically boyish good looks: tall, lean, dirty blonde hair, blue eyes, an easy smile. He was smart and funny and kind and flirty. Women were crazy for him. He would routinely leave work with phone numbers scrawled on napkins, the back of a check, or sometimes up his forearm. But there was never that sort of chemistry between us. We were just fast friends. He was loyal, an earnest listener, curious, he remembered things you told him even if it was years ago. He loved music; when he first heard Grace he was gutted to learn Jeff Buckley was dead. He brought my kitties treats when he visited. He was a fantastic cook, generous, a bit mischievous, instinctively rebelled against authority all with a smile on his face, and cared for me in a way that was cellular, the sort of friend who would go to the mattresses for you. He was nearly fifteen years younger than I, but he was fiercely protective of me. And we made each other laugh every time we were together. I adored him. He adored me. Whenever my parents came to town, Matt always joined us for at least one meal; and the same was true in reverse. He was family.
After I left NYC, Matt opened a couple of restaurants. A few years later, he too left the City. During my early years in Michigan, when my health was terrifyingly bad, I lost touch with so many people or fell into diminished contact. It’s hard for me to remember now how often we were in touch but I knew about the restaurants—I ate at the first during an early visit—and I knew when he moved. But it was only recently we’d started to catch up more deeply on each other’s lives; lives we’d once known everything about. It was like we’d never left off.
Friendships carved from the marrow of one another’s bones are like that: primordial, untamed by time or distance. Matt was always with me. Still is.
When I returned home from the museum, I called his girlfriend again, this time for a longer talk, full of rich details about his life there and his death. She shared that Matt kept lists (and recipes) on scraps of cardboard cut from boxes and that “Text Jane” was on the last list he wrote. Oh, Reader: my heart.
I spent the rest of the day, texting with two friends who also knew Matt—one who worked with him and the other who ate dinner at Lil’ Frankie’s a lot with me. I sunk into a heavy nostalgia; death can pull you back like that.
People know you at certain times in your life and you know them, by which I mean, really know them and let them really know you, and those knowings become sacred.
One friend texted: “I hate that we are at an age where we are unfortunately losing our peers.”
Which is true. But what’s also true is death is always happening. Flowers, wars, trees, roadkill, that mosquito we smush, family members and friends dead from freak accidents and bad health, the animals who share our home whose death is looming the moment we adopt them, and so much more.
My life has been strangely full of death starting at a young age when every cat I loved died before they reached one year. The deaths of fellow students in junior high and high school. One of my best friends dying of a lacerated heart (the windshield went through his chest) in college; another dead a few years later from cancer. The AIDS epidemic. On and on from there. Once a dear friend and a beloved auntie died on the same day.
For a while, in my thirties and forties, I thought I’d become good with death. I’ve always been someone who can be present to it. I’ve had candid conversations with dying friends and family members about their hopes and fears and what they think awaits them; their sorrows over what they are leaving behind; worries for loved ones, especially their animals; excitement for hopeful reunions with beloveds. I’ve bathed them when they’ve been too weak to bathe themselves, pouring warm water over emaciated limbs. Helped them create piles of soon to be left-behind belongings, deciding who gets what. Sat with them in their final hours, holding their hand, reading to them, or feeble attempt at singing.
None of this scared me. I never shied away.
After my mom died, I sat with her body for hours, saying prayers, bathing her, anointing her with oil. I was by her side when the people from the funeral home arrived and slid her into a body bag resting upon a stretcher; I walked with them out to the van that drove her away.
The same with the animals in my life. With one exception that haunts me still, I’ve held each in my arms at the time of death. Dug holes in their much beloved back garden, once during a thunderstorm, to hold their bodies. Or in my NYC years, spread their ashes on the roofs where they had once frolicked.
I was sturdy in my acceptance that death was a part of life. I was sad. But I had a peaceful, practical relationship with it. I understood its beauty, its necessity, its orderliness.
Then seven years ago, my kitty Hank died, and I simply could not accept the fact he was gone. I loved Hank beyond all measure but I’ve loved many animals and humans beyond all measure; in this way, there was nothing unusual or special about his death. But something inside me had shifted. A refusal had taken root. Hank cannot be dead, I found myself thinking in clear, immoveable language. This is wrong.
This belief in the wrongness of his death and the many deaths of beloveds that have followed, convinced me that my fury and sorrow, my steadfastness in my grief, could somehow conjure him back to life. For weeks, I looked for him in all his regular places, surprised anew each time he wasn’t there.
Why this dramatic change? I’ve no answer. But the shock of death hasn’t left me.
I’m still able to be present to death. I can still talk about it with those in need, can still help others, if needed. I’m grateful these abilities remain unaltered. But the fact that Matt, for instance, is no longer on this plane shocks me in ways death did not used to. My heart, my mind, my soul argue against it. Perhaps they recognize that he, and all the others, are still with us in some manner, a manner the West largely doesn’t recognize. They are reminding me to look for him in ways the five senses do not register. Or perhaps they have simply come undone: too many deaths and more yet to come, plus the state of the world.
Of all the post-death theories on offer, reincarnation makes the most sense to me. When I watch a video of a child prodigy magnificently playing a piano or trouncing a skilled adult at chess, I think, “They have done that before.” Or when I meet an animal or a human whom I know instantly and they know me, I’ve come to believe we are previously known to one another. Energy doesn’t die. Why wouldn’t our spirits find new vessels.
Many years ago, I spoke with my dear friend Cheryl the day before she died. She had cancer but was incredibly lucid. We told each other everything we loved about one another and shared some of our favorite moments together. “I hope when you come back, we find each other again,” I said. “I hope that, too,” she said. And then she was gone.
When I interviewed
last year, they shared a line that they loved from a poem by Saul Williams: “only believers in death will die.” When I asked what they took that line to mean, Andrea said: “I don't think that what's real can die. I don't think consciousness can die. And I don't believe love can die. I don't know if there's anything else in the world that’s real.”I called Matt’s mom after receiving the news and left her a voicemail. The next day, she left one for me. “Thank you for loving my son,” she said. “Thank you for taking such good care of him in NYC.”
I did take such good care of Matt. He was young and wild in his own Matty way and I stood by him through all of it.
He took such good care of me, too.
I hope when he comes back, we find each other again.
If you enjoyed this essay, you might like this one about my mother’s death:
Oh Jane this touched me deeply and I am so sorry for your loss. You may have intended to write eloquently about aging, which no doubt you will in future, but this: it gave so much about friendship, death, grief, the preciousness of our lives and the comfort of knowing there is something beyond our deaths. Thank you for this.
I needed this tonight so much. I’m blubbering over here and can barely read the screen, but wanted you to know that you gave me a gift just now. Thank you, Jane. Thank you for sharing about Matt and life and death and reminding me that what’s real can’t die. 😭😭
So much love to you. ❤️🩹🩵