So our friend L died last week.

I don't know. I wanted to note this. I wanted to talk about it. I wanted to discuss the fact that all of our friends, people I haven't been in touch with in years, seem to have been thinking about her last week just by chance. I wanted to think a little bit about death. And about the meaning of Easter, and of Passover. She was at home with her family, apparently, for Passover. She was not doing well -- this is all information I got from an email that wasn't even sent to me, it was forwarded, accidentally I think. But she was apparently not doing well at all. L was a heroin addict. Last time I saw her she was coming from a methadone clinic. She was trying to get better, but that was many years ago. God knows what has happened in the interim. She never, never, never had any peace in her life. She was constantly struggling against loneliness and sadness and an obvious sense that she needed to fight for love. And this year, at Passover, she was not doing well, and she asked her parents if she could stay with them for a while. They said no. I'm sure that was not easy for them to do -- I think she probably worked their nerves to no end, and more importantly I think they probably believed it was best for her to not have the safety net. She had to learn to take care of herself. So they told their own daughter, the junkie, to go figure it out on her own. Here's what that email says:

"She asked her parents if she could stay for a while and they said no. While it seems like this really wasnt planned, when they went into her place she was in bed and it was messy, and we all know that if L were planning this it would have been neat there would have been a well crafted letter, but anyway, she does seem to have known that she wasnt doing well. But then again, L hadnt been doing well for so long."

I don't really know what this means. I'm not sure who "they" are, and I'm not sure why they went into her place. I don't know exactly what it means to say she "wasn't doing well." I can't tell whether this describes a suicide, an OD, or something else.

I wanted to write about all this, and write about the unbelievably complicated feelings that this raises in those of us who knew her, loved her briefly, and then wrote her off. And I wanted to take a moment to think about her, who she was, why we loved her, why we hated her. All the incredible things she brought to the world. And she really brought a lot. And I wanted to use this as an opportunity to think about the possibility of some sort of hope, of rebirth, you know, of metaphorical resurrection. But I don't have the time. I have to go. I'm going to be late.