Cake

He was 27 years old. He was a mountain climber. Saturday he was alive, today he wasn't. It was as simple as that.

He died on a mountain but not in the way you would expect. He had a brain aneurysm and collapsed. He had barely gotten out of his car, before the trail up had even started. That was on Sunday. Today is Monday. The funeral is on Thursday. My birthday is on Saturday.

His name was William Wilson. His Brother, Bruce Wilson, was my best friend. Still is, I suppose. We have never qualified it like that but I was the first person he told about losing his virginity, he was the guy I called when my 8 year relationship came tumbling down. And I was the one he called after he heard about William. It wasn’t the first time I’d heard him cry but it was a rare occurrence. Before he even said the words “William is dead”, I knew it was coming. You could just sense it. This wasn’t being stood up for a date or getting your wallet stolen. This was something big. This was a different kind of heartbreak.

I cried to be empathetic but I had barely known William. He had stayed out in Virginia when the rest of us moved to D.C. He didn’t make the leap to the big city. He said he had panic attacks in the city. He said that he liked living in the country. He married young and had chickens and a station wagon. He was the youngest out of all of us. It made me jealous. I wanted comfort and security. I wanted cage free eggs and a farmer tan. I wanted to wear a cowboy hat earnestly, not as part of some sort of ironic costume. I had bags of pasta piled in a dirty cabinet and a photo book of all my old girlfriends. I had cable TV and video game systems and old movies to pass the time. My eggs weren’t cage free, damn it. And I was the oldest out of everybody. It wasn’t fair. It is pointless to complain about all of this now, obviously. He’s dead for Christ’s sake. He has a widow. I imagine her having to drive down to the morgue, in the car he probably died less than 5 feet away from, to identify the body. I instantly never want any of that. I want to spare an innocent woman the pain of seeing her lover lifeless and naked on a cold, metal table. Suddenly, my bachelor lifestyle doesn’t seem so bad. I’m willing to trade companionship and comfort for a tearless funeral.

“Of course I’ll be there for the funeral!” I say to Bruce, almost angrily. Why would he even have to ask? Bruce had a problem with not trusting people to do what was expected of them. He was almost shocked to find that you’d remembered to keep a lunch date or to come to his birthday party.

Now it was my party I was worried about him coming to. You only turn 30 once, people stay dead forever. I realize how much of an asshole I am for saying this. There will be other birthdays, I suppose. I should just cancel the whole thing. Spare myself the agony of nobody showing up. Or worse, a bunch of glum mourners in party hats putting on happy faces just because some asshole is having a birthday. I’ll just turn 30 next year. It will be easier that way.


* * * * *

After the funeral came and went, time sort of stood still. Days seemed to last forever. I got a few days off work and spent them lying in bed and listening to records, watching TV. I didn’t think about William except for when I felt guilty for not thinking about him. I worried about Bruce, back at home in Virginia. Having to deal with life insurance and wills and headstones. I thought some about how the next day I would have to go back to work and how it would be my birthday after that. I thought about the irony of celebrating life so soon after honoring death. I wondered who I knew well enough to bring a present or if anybody would take the responsibility to bring cake and candles. At around 3pm I gave up on thinking and fell asleep for a while. Before I nodded off I thought “death is this but only forever”.