Keeping Track of Unforgettable People

On my desk is a very brief obituary notice about a woman I worked with many years ago. If I wasn’t a faithful reader of the Sunday obits, I’d never know she had died. We weren’t close but we worked hard together for a period of time, changing how Milwaukee’s alcohol and drug treatment system worked and having dozens of lunches to plan and later celebrate. And then our time of common cause evaporated.

I knew she was a curler and that she and her husband were in curling leagues. It was a big deal for them. I knew she did the New York Times crossword puzzle every day, every word, every square. I knew she was always looking on the bright side and had a kind of bouncy kinetic energy that your favorite gym teacher had. She would have been able to climb that rope in gym class and laugh all the way up and down. She also was a smoker, and she died of complications of COPD.

Lordy. There has to be so many people that I worked with or knew somehow who have died without me knowing it. I don’t remember all of them to go looking for their obits. It’s just like people and experiences and relationships – important once but not enduring – are just shed with age. We don’t remember who we’ve forgotten.

It’s a melancholy thing to consider.

Who have I told, “I’ll never forget you?” I don’t have a list. I need to make a list of all the unforgettable people and what makes them so. And keep the list somewhere safe and then hope I’m on somebody else’s list. It’s an abyss out there otherwise, the anonymity of it all.

Tomorrow, I will start on my list.