Maggie Estep kept me sober by being awake and alive in the world. She was happy. I wanted—as they say—what she had.
She died of a heart attack at age fifty. She was walking her dog and had what she thought was a panic attack. Her boyfriend insisted they go to the emergency room. She fell to the floor, went into a coma, never woke up. She’d been sober for thirty years, was a vegan for twenty, taught yoga. There was probably some cardiac flaw from her biological parents. She’d never met them.
The day can change at any time.
I was at Grand Central Station, headed up to Nyack to meet a manager. I got an email from Todd Colby—her fellow MTV Unplugged poet, from that weird moment in 1993 when MTV ran black-and-white films of poetry.
Todd had come from Iowa with a band called Drunken Boat. He’d sung my favorite opening lyric of all time: Get off the tractor! Get on the bale!
Before opening the email, I was just happy to see his name in my inbox after so long.
I wandered around Grand Central—dissociated—forgetting my train.