And then I crawled into his unmade bed, wrapping myself in his comforter like a cocoon, surrounding myself with his smell. I took out my cannula so I could smell better, breathing him and out, the scent fading even as I lay there, my chest burning until I couldn’t distinguish among the pains.
Because there is no glory in illness. There is no meaning to it. There is no honor in dying of.
Every year, many, many stupid people graduate from college. And if they can do it, so can you.
Dude, I don’t want to talk about Lacey’s prom shoes. And I’ll tell you why: I have this thing that makes me really uninterested in prom shoes. It’s called a penis.
I just want to do something that matters. Or be something that matters. I just want to matter.
People are supposed to care. It’s good that people mean something to you, that you miss people when they’re gone.
Witness also that when we talk about literature, we do so in the present tense. When we speak of the dead, we are not so kind.
Right, well, he’d been sick for a while and his nurse said to him, ‘You seem to be feeling better this morning,’ and Isben looked at her and said, ‘On the contrary,’ and then he died.
I went on spouting bullshit Encouragements as Gus’s parents, arm in arm, hugged each other and nodded at every word. Funerals, I had decided, are for the living.
Last words are always harder to remember when no one knows that someone’s about to die.
My father died suddenly, but also across the years. He was still dying, really – which meant I guess that he was still living, too.