She hasn’t been notified of her death. So, she continues to appear at events. She was there for her nieces’ and nephews’ birthdays, for dinners hosted by co-workers, for small get togethers arranged by close friends who crave one another out of love and loneliness; she appeared in a dream I had once. Admittedly, death doesn’t undermine dream appearances.

Death had not undermined her personality either - she is a great conversationalist, still. Watch her speak, from the corner of your eye, an animated woman, utterly engaged with the gathering crowd. She livens up any room she’s in.

No one has told her of her death. To be perfectly honest with you, I too have forgotten. We chat every other day and it hasn’t come up. Sometimes, she is melancholy. All of it. Her eyes glisten and she smells like a sad song. When she sighs her nostrils do not flare from the pressure of the air. Yet, I haven’t noticed or will not bring it up; she is dead but it is inconsequential to me.

She rang me up the other day and wailed into the phone. I wished I could stop her, stop the pain. She sounded more alive then than when she was alive. I told her to calm down, it did not go well, and perhaps I had misjudged her predicament.

“Why are you upset?” I asked her again

“I haven’t been sleeping,” she murmured softly amidst her loud aches.

“That can be unsettling,” I nodded into the phone

She sniffled. I was optimistic about having helped her, unimpressive though my show of empathy was. I was beginning to lose interest in this dynamic. I was beginning to lose interest in her as she wilted before me.

No one had told her she was dead. The crowd around her was thinning. She wasn’t fun at parties. Her misery became her sidekick, angling to take over. Nobody had spoken to her. She spoke to nobody. She escaped rooms unremarkably - a stream of sunlight disappeared by curtains drawn shut. Her name appeared on nobody’s lips. She had become desolate - a cloak with no body to adorn.

On days that are difficult, I think about her. I wonder why she left, finally. Who had told her? I wonder if I’d be given the same courtesy when I go. Or if we deserve to know. I wonder on whose lips I will not appear anymore.