On the Death of a Colleague
She taught theater, so we gathered in the theater. We praised her voice, her knowledge, how good she was with Godot and just four months later with Gigi. She was fifty. The problem in the liver. Each of us recalled an incident in which she'd been kind or witty. I told about being unable to speak from my diaphragm and how she made me lie down, placed her hand where the failure was and showed me how to breathe. But afterwards I only could do it when I lay down and that became a joke between us, and I told it as my offering to the audience. I was on stage and I heard myself wishing to be impressive. Someone else spoke of her cats and no one spoke of her face or the last few parties. The fact was I had avoided her for months. It was a student's turn to speak, a sophomore, one of her actors. She was a drunk, he said, often came to class reeking. Sometimes he couldn't look at her, the blotches, the awful puffiness. And yet she was a great teacher, he loved her, but thought someone should say what everyone knew because she didn't die by accident. Everyone was crying. Everyone was crying and it was almost over now. The remaining speaker, an historian, said he'd cut his speech short. And the Chairman stood up as if by habit, said something about loss and thanked us for coming. None of us moved except some students to the student who'd spoken, and then others moved to him, across dividers, down aisles, to his side of the stage.
Stephen Dunn (1939-2021) Landscape at the End of the Century, 1991
