As Zander and I walked home from the movies, (me trying desperately to unclasp myself from the arm he kept putting around me. Oh, the perils of being too short and being “just friends” with your recently separated ex.) he mentioned how his mother, in her 70’s, had just lost a friend named Egor. The only thing I remember about Egor is that when I met the elderly gentleman he kissed my hand and told me I was lovely, and that Zander’s mother’s complained about him “talking, talking, always nonstop with the talking” in the car ride to the restaurant for Zander’s birthday. (Those were the days!) Now he was dead.
It was Zander’s mother that called in the search party. Accustomed to receiving calls from him on an almost daily basis, she grew concerned after not hearing from him in over a week and knew it had to be over more than just something she said. She called his friends, the family members she knew, even the hospitals and no one had seen or heard from him over that past week. Finally the police were called in to investigate and upon entering his apartment found him passed away peacefully on his couch, like a nap he’d never woken up from. He’d been dead for a week and a half. If it hadn’t been for Zander’s mother, it might have been a few more weeks before they’d think to start looking for him.
Zander said that what was tragic was that Egor had spent his life taking care of the people who died before him, including his sick wife, brothers, sisters, and parents but when it came time for him to die he was all alone. I didn’t even know Egor but the thought of him standing by all those bedsides over his lifetime yet with no one there by him on the couch during that brief moment of panic when he knew he was dying, made me want to cry. It also made me very frightened. If I dropped dead on my couch tonight who would notice?
Eventually I think my mother would be the one to call in the search party. She calls and calls my apartment constantly, which is the primary function of my answering machine. I hardly ever pick up and if I do it’s only to let her know I’m alive, too busy to see her but yes, I love her very much. I’m not naïve anymore, I know when she calls it’s less out of care for me, and more out of neediness: call me back, I’m lonely, I’m suffering, I need to talk. Her latest gimmick: “Why should I go see a doctor? You should be my therapist.” My Mom would probably come barging into my apartment eventually. If anything to get something off her chest, she wouldn’t actually expect to find me dead.
What about my ex’s Zander and Harold, girlfriends Marina and Tessa, my old boss Tim, the people I dance with - the people that weave in and out of my life, some more so than others, would they ever find out I died? Or would they just call one day and find my cell phone disconnected? Would they send me a Christmas card and have it returned to sender? Would they assume I just got up and left one day without saying goodbye? Would they even try to find out what REALLY happened to me? I’ve decided they probably wouldn’t. Maybe Zander’s and my conversation took such a morbid turn from having just watched ‘The Black Dahlia.’ Hence I gave a disclaimer that if I was killed spectacularly, in some gruesome way (which is obviously the undesirable outcome), of course people would notice and the whole media circus would bring “friends” and acquaintances out of the woodworks. That I could imagine, and thank goodness I wouldn’t be alive to hear what people had to say about me: sycophants and critics alike.
I had a friend who disappeared. We went through a very difficult time in our lives together in a very complicated setting, a situation where we got to know more about each other than most friends do in a lifetime. I was in a great deal of physical pain, hers was emotional, both feelings were deep and crippling and we took care of each other. One winter before leaving for Hawaii I went to visit my friend, Keli, and I asked her what she planned to do for Christmas. “Oh I’ll be dead by then.” People in a lot of pain say things like that. I’ve heard it from many people, many times, all dead serious, all very much alive today . . . except for Keli. Now that I think about it, this was only time Keli ever said that to me. She had a son she adored, a daughter she was separated from but spoke of constantly, she was horribly anorexic and dangerously underweight but I still thought she had too much to live for to take her own life. She was in a facility that would keep her safe, so I left. But I never saw or heard from Keli again.
A month or so later I tried to track her down. I tried the residence she lived at but she no longer stayed there. I tried all the hospitals and treatment facilities in that area. I called her son’s father but he hadn’t seen her and she’d not come by to see her son. That’s when I knew something was very wrong. I called her father, a man she claimed disliked and rejected her as the black sheep of the family. I told him that I was a close friend who hadn’t seen her in a month. He said no one in the family had heard from her for even longer. Why wasn’t anyone looking for Keli? How long did a person need to be missing for someone to notice? Didn’t anybody care?
Am I the only one who’s spent nights crying at the thought of Keli’s limp body floating amongst the chunks of ice in the Charles River? At best I imagine she’s buried somewhere in a wooden box with a number on top. I’ve searched for her everywhere, hoping she’s still alive, using various internet tools to track her down but the trail goes cold the year she told me there’d be no Christmas. The fact that she’s not listed as deceased is what’s most disturbing: she’s neither lost nor found. Now that I’m across the country I’m helpless to even put closure on this case. She was one of the most important people in my life. She stood by my bedside but she died alone.
MikoFabulous posted on Oct 07, 2006
| views: 281
Comments
-
aeschylus said on Oct 07, 2006....
Miko ...
A poignant post, and so many thought-provoking questions and issues are raised.
How sad we live in a time and society where individuals cry out their self importance, yet show that they devalue "life" to the point someone is not even missed for so long.
I apologize, I'm struggling with words this weekend but will follow and try to comment more later. LOL, seems when my "reading" gets better, my "writing" declines. I think its called "can't walk and chew gum at the same time."
aeschylus
bai ming sheng
-
MikoFabulous said on Oct 07, 2006....
Sometimes reading is enough, Aeschylus. If all you can say is that something that was written touched you, then it means a lot to me.
Keli was not unlike the Dahlia, this beautiful, wonderful, desperate creature that no one cared enough to claim. The Dahlia, Elizabeth Short, only became important because of the brutal nature of her death. I don't know how Keli died. I assumed it was suicide, although it's only JUST occured to me that it could have been worse. No body was identified, anything could have happened to her. I will never cry enough about not knowing what happened to her.
She loved angels. That winter I bought her several angel figurines as a Christmas present to hang around her room. I'm not a religious person and I don't know the rules but I always imagine her as an angel, surrounded by white light, with feathered wings and soft expression of peacefulness. I imagine that she's found peace and is looking down at her little boy and girl as they grow up, and that she might see me crying sometime when I think of her, so that she knows how much she is missed by at least one person: me.
-
aeschylus said on Oct 08, 2006....
Miko ...
You are absolutely right about the angels, and there is no "right" way to bring angels into a space.
It is always the right way, and the best.
God bless both you and your friend.
aeschylus
bai ming sheng
-
MikoFabulous said on Oct 08, 2006....
Thank you Aeschylus, you always make some of the most thoughtful comments.
-
missb said on Oct 08, 2006....
Another great post from you, Miko :)
Cheers!
-
silverwhisper said on Oct 08, 2006....
sorry to hear about your friend, miko.
ed
-
Expendable said on Oct 08, 2006....
It could be that she doesn't want to be found. I don't know why.
Or that something was wrong with her that she didn't want to share. It's a little vain, but some would rather you'd remember them as happy and healthy, not lying in a hospital bed wth all these tubes running into their bodies.
-
aeschylus said on Oct 08, 2006....
Expendable ...
You may have missed ...
"horribly anorexic and dangerously underweight" ...
I've had friends like that too. It's rather impossible for them to "disappear" ... the ongoing medical care and monitoring is necessary.
This disease can kill you just by gaining a couple of pounds.
aeschylus
bai ming sheng
-
MikoFabulous said on Oct 08, 2006....
Expendable: I considered, in fact at first I hoped that was what had happened, that she just wanted to leave her old life and troubles behind. But there a few too many reasons why that was unlikely:
1. She was too mature and truly understood that her problems: aneorexia, and in particular PTSD - which was the circumstance I met her under, were problems that were gonna follow her around not matter where she went.
2. She had ABSOLUTELY NO MONEY. Nothing. And no one to give it to her, no one who even had the means to give it to her. So she had no way to run away. The last time I saw her I was the person who came to buy her new clothes because she was too skinny to wear her old ones. As much as I hated shopping in the children's section, I didn't want her to have to borrow clothes and wear the same thing everyday. We were very protective of eachother. The clothes were all lycra based, elasticated and stretchy - I wasn't going to encourage her, I knew she could grow inside these clothes.
3. The biggest factor was the son she was battling for custody over. She left her baby's father because he was severely abusing her and she feared for her child, so she went to a shelter for battered women. Unfortunately her trauma from this and other abuse made her mentally unstable in the eyes of the court, putting her child right back where she had tried to protect him from. If she were alive I know she would have fought this to the death for custody over little Kenny. Or else I know she would have given up on life completely if she lost her little boy. I still have his picture too.
-
aeschylus said on Oct 08, 2006....
Miko ...
Thank you so much for bringing up the issue regarding abusers and the courts.
Actually, for anyone who is not in the U.S. and thinks the court system here is fair, or just, or whatever "rumors" there are outside U.S. borders, think again.
In the United States, JUSTICE IS FOR SALE ... in any court, be that criminal, civil, family court, or even the probate courts.
The court follows the highest bidder.
The auctioneers are the attorneys, and they get a large portion of the "cut."
Some of the worst "abusers" in private and public life, are the judges themselves.
In one state I saw non-published statistics (that obviously will never be published), that at least 90 percent of the judiciary were supported in their campaigns (and other personal and private business interests), by the local drug manufacturers and distributors. If anyone speaks out against them, they lose!
So hopefully the reality of the American judiciary will be exposed sooner than later.
During the Alito hearings last year, I heard a statement by one of the Supreme Court Justices (sorry, can't recall the name, but I think it was on CSpan).
He said something to the effect that, "There is a fine line between a civilized society and violence in the streets. That line is the courts. If the court system fails (I personally assign the words, corruption, nepotism, etc.), then we will have an uncivilized society."
Something like that. I can't quote it directly. Personally, I think its about time the American people revolted. They did it in 1776, why not now?
But my sense of what he was saying is that if the courts become corrupted, which is what they already are, then the public will eventually simply revolt, fighting back against another unjust system of government. And the violence in the streets (and elsewhere) will continue.
What is worst than the actual corrpution of the U.S. courts is the reality that American's simply don't give a damn!, and even if they do, they figure it's for someone else to fix or take care of.
Sorry about the vent on your blog, Miko, but I'm in that frame of mind today it seems.
aeschylus
bai ming sheng
-
MikoFabulous said on Oct 08, 2006....
Ah yeah, this REALLY wasn't about politics. It was about the dying, the missing and the lost souls of the world.
-
aeschylus said on Oct 08, 2006....
Sorry about that Miko ...
You can delete the comment. I got on my soapbox again.
:{
apologies
aeschylus
bai ming sheng
Comment on "Who Will Find You When You Die?"
Related Posts:
destinydiva
posted 5 days ago
| views: 51
|
Dear Mr 7...... ( AKA the one and only, fantastic lbnfo7)... read entire post
Kaistarr
posted 3 days ago
| views: 27
|
Greetings, my soulcast family. Many things have gone on since last i posted. Master and i are doing well, well kinda, Master got hurt near the end of October, so i have had to pull double duty to keep up on the all the work that needs to be done to keep... read entire post