Call You by Your Name

"Resurrection was not a joyful sign of hope but an alarming oddity, something potentially very dangerous."

"Every Life Was Precious" -- An Easter Sermon by Rowan Williams

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Dear Kate,

I want to ask you about your friend.  That one.

I am sure I am being insensitive, actually impertinent, to do this now, but I wonder.  The whole thing doesn't make sense, sounds so wonder-full, at once tragic and comical, bedazzles me with its strange beauty that tastes like a bitter cup.  It's more than a curiosity I have.  It makes me look at things and people differently.  I am not sure if it has anything to do with me yet, but if you don't mind answering me this one question I shall leave you in peace--at least for the rest of today.

Why does he come back?

You knew him.  You must know now.  You worked with him, the wonderful doctor, the enfant terrible who seemed to know how to "put things together," you told me, things you learned in school about health care that are mostly, if not idealistic, susceptible to all sorts of budgetary compromises and human conceits, and it was out of this messy business of wellness maintenance and restoration that this genius practitioner, this teacher, this leader of yours worked himself into the heart the System, which was the hospital, but more so, the soul chamber of everyone going in and out of its door.

People, many in your circle of colleagues, used to love him, you told me, those who cared and found the System wanting and their life yearning.  They wanted to be real for a moment, make themselves answerable to the call of true wellness, of others and themselves, in the intricacy of human relatedness broad but precise, professional yet never impersonal.

And these followers of this Friend, you observed, were mostly people who could afford to lose.  For one, they weren't high-up people who must speak on behalf of the System no matter what.  More importantly, they've all to different degrees experienced the unwellness of the wellness-dispensing System, what it has done to themselves and to those under their care.  They felt like a fraud, and this Friend came along to tell them it's ok to take off their masks and be real for once and always.

And he showed you all how.

He showed everyone how to lose oneself into the gain of others.  And he did it in ways at once calm and flamboyant, restrained but utterly distasteful--especially understandably to the higher-up people.  There were, you told me, different accounts of his personality and deeds, very intimate anecdotes recounted by colleagues and patients, that were contradictory but all-of-one-piece as you understood this Friend at close range, within breathing distance.  You were perplexed.  You were amazed.  You were shocked and humbled and sometimes inexplicably infuriated by the simplicity and weightiness of his presence, which somehow inhaled the world and released it back into the fresh spring air. You thought he was an answer to your prayer, a prayer you were afraid of being answered.

When he died, very young, the news didn't make its way out of your hospital's parking lot.  He was too small a potato in the minestrone of human affairs, brilliant and fascinating as he was.  The System holds itself and you'll keep dancing to its tune, all of us.  It was a good run, almost real, but that was yesterday.

People talked, you shared with me.  They created their own headlines on social media, innuendos and commentaries, theories and redaction.  Some said he asked for it, the reckless way he held himself out to be and made people feel bad about themselves: you could almost hear the applause from upstairs when the news broke, of him succumbing to the virus he aspired to kill for good, in a bed of the many infected he once cared for and cured.

Some said the hospital could have done more to help him but for good reasons didn't.  There were "budgetary concerns."  He should have a good taste of his own medicine, suggested by the air of acquiescence on the floor.  Was there a conspiracy to silence him?  No one was talking.

You didn't talk.

You didn't tell me anything since then.  Your once enthusiastic chatter about this fabulous Friend dropped itself off the precipice that was his suffering and death and the topic was no more, just like that.  There is a cloud over your head since and I wonder what it is and if you put it there.

Where were you in all these, can you tell me?  (I understand I am breaking the promise to ask you only one question today but I do think this is related and necessary.)  How do you see yourself in this man's undoing?  You in your position (high-up, for my finding no way to dull the truth), what was at stake for you?  There were gaps, big and small and, honestly, many, in the story you told me about him, that I was wondering all along if those were where you would fit in.  You approve treatments, very pricey medicines, the dispensing of wellness, don't you?  Did you have a hand in the System's final disapproval against your friend?

Your text this morning, I couldn't discern the tone.  It was ambivalent and maybe that's how you're feeling now.  You told me he came back.

You said it was a dream but you could smell him, more real than you had ever smelled of him.  He asked you to touch him and you wouldn't dare but already did with your mind.  It was a blur of a clairvoyance that speaks about what's to come next, you claimed.  So, my friend, what's to come next?

You didn't answer me, and I can understand.  So I am writing this letter that probably does more to me than to you, for I am asking for an answer that you are not ready to give, I can tell.  And maybe by the time you can come up with a way to tell it it won't be the kind of telling that people are circulating on social media now.  There were "facts" and there was truth.  I want to hear the truth as it was revealed to you, speaking your name.

And you said he called you by your name.

Yours, Alex

(Disclaimer: the story above is a complete fabrication of Alex and has absolutely nothing to do with Kate's life professional or otherwise.)