I know nothing about death. Absolutely nothing.
Do you want to know something?
I’m almost forty and I don’t know anyone who has died.
Okay, sure, there was my Auntie Joan; she had these soft bones that just kind of crumbled. Then there was this kid Danny who went to my school. He dropped out, to take up a trade. Went up North to be an electrician and got tangled in some live wires.
And there are those people I read about in the newspaper, whom I almost feel I know, like that boy from UCLA who left his dorm at 3:00 a.m. The police dog followed the boy’s scent to a bus stop where the trail ended and the scent disappeared. They found his skeleton a couple of years later in a basement in Oregon.
So I have known or known of some people but no one really close to me. That’s a little weird, right?
As a result, I can’t help thinking I’m deficient in something. I can’t help . . . feeling I lack a certain, I don’t know, a certain weight.