Wednesday, December 19, 2007
From a happier time:
Yesterday I lost a beautiful friend and a kindred spirit. It is next to impossible for me to express all that I want to say about Jenn and how she enlivened our drab world. Yet the grief that does not speak whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break.
The last time I saw Jenn was right before our Corporations final. She gave me one of those looks. Neither of us really ever went to class (nor cared for the subject), and that was our inside joke. A week earlier, our professor gave his final lecture before fading off into retirement, and both of us happened to be there. He ended with a terse but poignant speech about what we should take away from the class--and from the law school experience. Suffice to say, it wasn't about black-letter law or the importance of regurgitating an outline into a bluebook. It was about life in general, and how we shoud conduct ourselves.
He then left us with copies of a requiem he wrote a decade earlier for a deceased colleague named Art. It asked, "How does one credibly praise in epitaph one who really did never meet a person he didn't like," before noting that one could not help but smile "when you think of him." The work finished in admiration and praise with instructions to "just lead a life imitating Art."
Despite my struggle to write even the most paltry of tributes for Jenn, I think it is fair to ask how one should credibly praise in epitaph a young woman who was loved by all. Like Art, Jenn made us smile. She was the one person that everyone asked about if she happened to be late or missing. When I now think about Jenn I can't help but laugh before giving in to my sadness. She was our fourth roommate--the one we would look forward to finding on our couch after a long night of general mischief. While it pains me to admit it, gone are the days when we would wake up and laugh at our antics from the night before.
At this point, I don't know what else to say--other than we should all try harder to imitate Jenn.
