An Ode to Mike

vivianimbriotis | July 2, 2023, 1:56 p.m.

Where does the candle flame go when the candle is blown out? Silly question, of course. The candle flame was a process, and now the things that were contributing to bringing about that process have ceased to do so.

I looked after Mike for quite a while, and he was always good for a chat. He knew he was dying, and he told us that he was not afraid of death. When I received a phone call from the nurse, I wasn’t expecting it, and at first did not understand what they were asking from me. “Yes,” I said, vaguely irritated, “I know he’s dying.” But they weren’t telling me he was dying. Dying is a process.

To certify a death, a doctor places a stethoscope atop the chest, a finger at the jaw, a light in the eye. We cry out, as though expecting a response. We ask them to squeeze our hand, and they never do. I had done this before, but never for someone I knew.

By way of an aside, let me say that patient confidentiality is the death of good writing, because all the texture of someone’s death is in the small things, which all too easily identify us. I would like to tell you that Mike went to the same café for years, and that they brought in food for him once a week while he was in hospital, and Mike never thanked them; but he did tell me that he was worried because they never asked him to pay for it. None of that is true, but I can’t tell you the small things about Mike that were true, and without the small things you will not understand. Some things like that were true.

His name wasn’t Mike, either. But I called him by his first name, and he called me by mine.

His death was a good one, as good as a death can be, I think.

Doctors have replaced priests as the custodians of death. People do not ask us what happens after it, but it is to us that they displace their anxiety of it, it is our social role to think about it so others are free not to. I think we are poorly suited for this role. Society has hired engineers for a job that requires philosophers.

Mike was a process, and now the things that were contributing to that process have ceased to do so. Tonight I will light a candle for him. Vale the process.