No one wants to see a sad animal

What happened? It went away, my last essay. I didn’t even say goodbye. It just disappeared, vanished into the cloud, it promised, only it didn’t settle there. Why? Because its keeper, its God, the internet, was not turned on. It had turned a blind eye, so the elegiac missive was gone, now shut behind a door (or “window”), that read something like, we’re not sure what happened—did you delete? It was my fault, basically, said the computer. And so, it was my fault, this unnoticing of detail, my inattention to detail. Pity, I thought, not angrily, more forlornly. Oh well, more thoughts down the drain, rather like the residue of a dream. But there is continuity, I’ve thought in the hours since. There’s continuity in similar problems arising, with similar underpinning themes: I missed a box here, having not checked something materially important. I didn’t dot an I; I failed to reset a password. As a result, there will be no access to pragmatic life. Problems, like deaths, happen in threes, and nothing gets sent to a heavenly cloud for safekeeping. Rather, I am stuck here on earth amongst the weeds and the glitches, contemplating something…something like the links between happenings.

              I mean, it is at least apropos that the lost essay had something to do with death, and in particular, a good-humored, if sardonic look at death. It featured a not-quite dream but written rather something like a dream story about a figure who is announcing their forthcoming death to a group of half-attentive friends. They are getting messages about a memorial date for a passing that hasn’t yet happened; a passing that, by implication, will occur suicidally, hence the precise anticipation. The responses of the friend group are variably confused. Their text messages were really funny, I can tell you. I know because I wrote the lines and then sent them to the cloud, thinking it would keep them safe—that it had a hard and reliable foundation. A cloud holds, I believe, but it also releases in rain. And I’d missed something important about how that works. Anyway, back to those friends and their funny if dispiriting reactions. They would not make it to the memorial because they weren’t given the proper notice. They need a week, they were consistently saying. And that was the joke, the central gag: people aren’t there for the big stuff, the death stuff; they are elsewhere, busy with their lives, but often pretending they are there for one another, like my essay was there for me fleetingly, and promising to stick around. It would catch me later, it seemed to say. It would never—what’s the term— “ghost” me.

              My protagonist, my guy, Jim, was set to ghost people, first by dying, but then, even before that, by not talking to them anymore. That’s how pissed he was by the half-hearted and therefore heartless reaction to his admittedly desperate memorial ploy. Only one person gave him the time of day. Rachel, a one-time crush and then heartbreaker, had always cared enough to appear out of thin air from her own itinerant life to come save the day or do something decisive and right. She’d act the angel, I thought, now thinking she could emerge from the same cloud in which the previous essay was buried. What’s the problem, she’d chide, though she knew really what was up. She’d gotten news through a sparse grapevine that my guy was in despair over an illness that was tying the hands of doctors. Oncologists, I called them, alluding to the specifics but dodging the C word. Jim never liked that word. Doesn’t like the way it sounds, the way its cadence spreads. Let’s cut to the chase, past the unmentionable pain, and then get to an even less mentionable pain: whether people in his life will show up for him, actually make an effort and care.

              “That sounds like self-pity”. Good old Rachel. Not angelic, but always cutting to the chase in another sense. Straight to the point. Good stuff. In fact, Jim never liked this side of Rachel. It’s the reason he got over the crush. He wanted softness in her to match the softness in his own belly. He wanted to lie on his back and have her rub his, ya know, belly.

              “And that’s bad, I guess?” That was about the memorial, not the belly.

              “Well, what did you expect? And I’m not talking about how gruff and clueless Paul is, or how preoccupied Jane is with her life. But…a memorial, really?”

              “What?”

              “Kinda creepy. I mean, is that a joke? Are we meant to say, oh sure, go ahead and kill yourself, we’ll be there on Saturday”

              “Well, no one even mentioned that part, it was—”

              “It’s hard to know when to take you seriously on that shit. You have a dark humor. It’s not the first time you’ve made a sideways suicide threat, plus it sends people into denial. They don’t know what to do”.

              “Well, they could do something, not just not say anything”

              “They did. They texted me, asked me to call you, and yes—part of that is not knowing how to deal with it—the other part was thinking I could”

              Jim wasn’t sure he agreed with that assessment and felt like saying so, but Rachel brooks no cheap jokes when she’s in her righteous stride, so he thought the better of it. This wasn’t how this was supposed to go, he reflected in a protracted, silent pause. Rachel was silent also, waiting for what she figured was Jim’s sulking to pass. This wasn’t even how this author figured this would go. My head was in the clouds, chasing lost words. Originally, this was a surrealist skit about deadness in society dropped into a little mischief about deadness. The lost script featured quips about whether the memorial could be re-scheduled for another day; whether refreshments would serve Vegans—that sort of thing. It was dually designed to lighten people up and yet make them feel uncomfortable. What Jim truly wanted he couldn’t ask for, but he could allude to it by speaking on behalf of his German Shepherd, Beowulf. He wanted someone to commit to taking care of the dog: to feed him, adopt him, whatever. He figured that would touch everyone’s heart, stir some action upon the loss of the master. The reasons would touch upon Rachel’s critique of Jim, which no one would direct at Beowulf. They’d all want to see his tail wag. No one wants to see a sad animal.