Dead Man’s Trilogy

• Gavin Kimmel

I. Flowers He Loved

In time that’s passed, I’ve come to see You learn a lot when someone dies

Of flowers from across the sea

That guide the dead as up they rise

The smell of life soon fills the air

As all the colors shed their light

They stop us falling in despair

And let us walk through endless night

But purple flowers cannot be

The violet is but a disguise

Pollen is yellow, for the bee

I’m eating flowers made of lies

II. Take a walk around a dead man’s house. The empty sofa, the half-read novels, the Blu-ray DVDs. Everything thick with the smell of cigarettes. He started smoking inside when the weather was nice, when he could just open his window, the hot ashes falling onto the street below. But now it is cold.

Abandoned Farmhouse. By Ted Kooser. Something went wrong, they said.

What killed him?

Was it old age? Or was it the cigarettes?

Trick question. It was cholangiocarcinoma. Bile duct cancer. But it might have been the cigarettes.

Did you know there around thirty cancerous cells in your body at this very moment? But you are young, and healthy, and they won’t hurt you.

But if they do, they will replicate rapidly, an exponentially growing clump of poison, disobeying the laws of nature and creating their own cell cycle. The repetition of growth and division, growth and division, without thought or recognition. But you’re still the one in control, right?

It’s still your body, right?

Take a walk around a dead man’s house.

They say he made a good end. His death paid tribute to the brilliance of his life. Step gently, careful not to break a memory.

There is a soft whirring.

Like the cancerous cell cycle, a record player, no record, spins its plate in slow circles. And you can’t turn it off.

III. Don’t Send Me Flowers Please

There are so many flowers in my house

The classics: lilies (poisonous for the cat), tulips, roses, then there are ones I don’t even know the name of but could describe in great detail

Like those little white flowers on thin stems that bundle together to form a collection of dots, all crowded into single amoeba of pin-sized petals

A bouquet or two around the house are nice, But not twenty-three (there are two vases in each room)

That’s too many vases

Too many flowers

Instead, send me memories

Send me love, send me support

Don’t send me plants, dying upon arrival

That’s just twenty-three reminders of death

Their sunshine just brightens the mourning (or lack thereof) in my heart

Their color will wither and die. And then what?

Send me stories about your family members who have died

Send me connection

Send me moments, like finding old pictures he was using as a bookmark

Send me tears

I need to cry

I naively thought, at first, that I wasn’t afraid of death

Because being afraid of death? That’s for children

Death is unavoidable. It’s one of the beautiful parts of life

But then think of our other, rational fears: heights, serial killers, bridges, the ocean

The reason I’m scared of those things is because I’m scared of getting hurt

And getting hurt means the distance between life and death narrows

It’s there, at the basis of all fears

And I’m afraid of it.