Mortality

The dean emailed the entire law school this morning to inform us that a student had died over the break, in a boating accident in Peru.

The woman was in my 12-person sub-section last year, but I did not know her well. She was at a firm dinner in the fall that I also attended, and she later asked if I was going there this summer. No, I replied, I decided to go with another firm in New York. Oh, we should hang out this summer, she said, in that offhand way of casual acquaintances. Equally off-handedly, I said: Definitely, that would be awesome.

It seems like it can't be real. How could she be dead? I saw her around campus once in a while, at the gym or walking to class in heels or trendy sneakers. She was pretty, and young, and had slightly buggy but startlingly green eyes. She was a partyer and a drinker, and she seemed like one of those carefree young law students, fully intending to go corporate, in New York, and someday get married to an equally highly educated and well-paid professional. But her brother is coming back tomorrow morning from Peru with her body. She'll be taken straight to an Islamic center in New York.

I've thought about the inevitable deaths of my folks and my older relatives with not infrequent regularity. It's not something I can really comprehend. I can't tell how I would react to the death of someone close to me. I wrote about the death of another acquaintance, Father Joseph, in January. His death shocked and saddened me too... I don't know what to say. I can only think: It could be any one of us, at any time, anywhere.