“i thought about you the day steven died…” j m mcmillan

Alison: “Steven owes me $140.”

Kait: “Yeah, he’s gonna owe me some money too.”

Patty Griffin’s Goodbye came on soft and mournful this morning. I changed the CD to avoid the sadness, but the song still hung around. Her voice does that, lingers in your ear like someone giggling whispered secrets in the girls’ bathroom.

The weirdest about death is that people go away but they’re still here somehow. I wonder if this is how the whole thing with ghosts got started, that people wanted their dead back in some way, even if they aren’t fully alive. That somehow you can still hold onto them in some small way. Retail therapy doesn’t really do the trick like a ghost might.

Kait wishes April’s thoughts could have been Steven’s eulogy instead of the one that was given at his funeral. The text was "To live is Christ, to die is gain." Perhaps not one of the pastor's finer moments, considering the whole suicide angle.

Most eulogies don’t capture the dead well, anyway. Sometimes there’ll be a funny story, a line that makes us smile, a memory of how real they were just a short time ago. But it doesn't really tell you everything, the important things, the parts you loved.

My clearest memory of Steven is of him sitting in the chair at Kait’s apartment two summers ago in front of the green wall after we ate chicken marabella, which Kait made up the recipe for since she couldn’t find it and Corina wasn’t answering her phone. You mix up some olive oil and spices and olives and prunes, and you actually get a nice sauce. A lovely one, worthy of serving at some fancy-schmancy restaurant. I remember laughing at something Kait said while eating dinner. I remember savoring the last bite of chicken over the rice, and how Kait said before Steven got there, “I’m not just serving rice because Steven’s Asian. It's the only carbohydrate I have.” I remember how I made some off the cuff remark about something and how Steven disagreed with me gently, in a way that made me re-think my position. I remember laughing and talking and drinking wine that night. Mostly I remember we had a good time.

And the craigslist debaucles, those were all because of Steven, really. That's probably a story for another time, except it is important to know my craigslist matchmaking career was started by Steven.

But my eulogy for Steven is that memory of laughing and eating and enjoying time with friends. Really, what more can you want out of life, in the end?