When bad goes to worse
A friend lost her grown child in a sudden tragic accident. You try to find words to say for this occasion. I came up short when my friend’s two year old was diagnosed with a rare genetic disease, I kept trying to give her examples of how this wasn’t so bad when she kept telling me how fucked her daughter was – and in the end she didn’t speak to me for six months, her anger roiled over anything I tried to say. I can give you no comfort, my housekeeper wrote me one time in Marin County about not being able to find my comforter – yes, I can give you no comfort I finally told my friend, and you’re right, your daughter is fucked.
Today as I contemplate another friend, another child gone, I have again, nothing to say of any value.
To an Athlete Dying Young
by A. E. Housman (1859-1936)
The time you won your town the race
We chaired you through the market-place;
Man and boy stood cheering by,
And home we brought you shoulder-high.
To-day, the road all runners come,
Shoulder-high we bring you home,
And set you at your threshold down,
Townsman of a stiller town.
Smart lad, to slip betimes away
From fields were glory does not stay
And early though the laurel grows
It withers quicker than the rose.
Eyes the shady night has shut
Cannot see the record cut,
And silence sounds no worse than cheers
After earth has stopped the ears:
Now you will not swell the rout
Of lads that wore their honours out,
Runners whom renown outran
And the name died before the man.
So set, before its echoes fade,
The fleet foot on the sill of shade,
And hold to the low lintel up
The still-defended challenge-cup.
And round that early-laurelled head
Will flock to gaze the strengthless dead,
And find unwithered on its curls
The garland briefer than a girl’s.