Notes From the Teacher's Notebook: Death

My friend Adrián died last Tuesday night in New York, a hit and run when he was taking a walk at 2:30am. He died instantly. He was 29 years old, and very talented. He was a clown, an actor, a dancer… a charismatic person. Many will miss him, and I know that it is specially hard for his family.

Adrián was the youngest brother of Adolfo, a friend from the MFA. Adolfo got him involved with the performance of Solaresque, a poetry-dance-music piece created with the direction of Juan Felipe Herrera and the texts written during his poetry workshop. We got along well, so we collaborated in another piece for a performance night in Riverside. We met one afternoon at his parents’ house, where he was living, and improvised with masks and other things, around the theme of dogs. It was a dog night. So we came up with a piece with a very long name. It was the funeral of a dog. It started with the two of us walking out from the back of the audience, I was playing the bandoneon and singing opera, and he was carrying the bag full of stuff on his back. It was clownish sketch, something I had never done before.

That was the only piece we collaborated on together. We talked about doing something else in the future, but we never managed to find the time to meet. He was not living in town and every time he visited we couldn’t get together because of one thing or another, again and again. Last year, in October or so, he sent me a text message, where he just said, I am thinking of you. I didn’t recognize his number because I didn’t have it anymore. I had lost my phone with it. So I texted back, who is it?  Although, I thought it might be him. And he texted back, Adrián, I am in New York.

Adolfo gave me the news at 8am on Friday. I called him: I feel for you. It hit me hard, so I can only imagine how it hit you. The injustice of it all, the non-sense. I had to teach at 10:30am, so I went for a walk before my student came to calm my mind. I went to the Altadena library, by the Christmas Tree lane. It’s a very relaxing street, with the pattern of the trees’ shade on the asphalt. I go there when I need a walk. I always have books from the library on my night table so I have something to return there every time I go.

George, my student, arrived a bit early and sat down at his favorite Ikea chair with his notebook. George is from Trinidad, I don’t know his age but probably around 70. I told him about the death. He said, “That’s why I don’t worry about anything anymore. We don’t know when it’s going to be our turn.” He makes fun of me because I always work so hard to teach him something. Sometimes he comes, and if he didn’t write anything that week, we just talk. He comes for composition lessons, not piano, and he scolds me when I try to teach him piano and when I try too hard to give him ideas. He says, I do it because I want to, so if there are no ideas this week, that’s ok. They’ll come.

But that day, with the news of death fresh in my mind, we started talking about the inevitability of it, and I started thinking, why bother, if anyway, we all gonna die. And I suddenly saw myself talking to my students, the kids, pointing at them with my ugly finger, my witch face, my awful teeth and skin, screaming at the top of my lungs: “You’re gonna die anyway, so, why bother? Practice, don’t practice, it doesn’t matter! You’re gonna die!” culminating my fatalistic speech with a screeching laugh while the students run away.

I woke up from that vision, and after talking with George some more, I put the matter aside and I didn’t tell any of my other students about it. I didn’t have to teach in the afternoon, luckily. I had planned to write at that time, but I couldn’t. I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t stop thinking about death, Adrián, the meaningless of it all… and then I realized: I’m gonna die too. I’m not gonna live forever. It’s just so hard to let go. So attached to life, to the little things, to human contact. How could you let go of that?

But, it is what it is. Sooner or later, I’ll have to accept it.

Since I couldn’t write, I decided to go for a hike. On my way there I decided to call my friend Ngoc. We talked for an hour. Then I called Liz, for another half hour or so. Then I went to see Bernard, and I talked with him too. We went out, and in the middle of sushi, its strong taste, the heat of wasabi raising to my nose, the pleasure of the crab and fish, I thought of Adrián, so I raised my sake cup and made a toast for him, to you, Adrián, en agradecimiento, por ayudarme a apreciar las pequeñas cosas, que at least, yo todavía disfruto (to you, Adrián, because you helped me appreciate the small things, that, at least, I still enjoy).

And, just in case, I put the phone number of my parents and sisters in Argentina on the fridge. You never know when something might happen, when someone will have to make the dreaded call.