Breathing fast and slow

Michael has died. Another friend is gone. Sunday, we bid our farewells to him at a memorial service  in the open air on the grounds of one of the colleges where Michael once taught. Students, colleagues, mentors and friends gathered together and did what the living do when a friend dies: We shared with one another our stories about spending time in Michael's company. We ate; we drank; we laughed; we cried. Together, we remembered what it was like for us, uniquely, to be with Michael. It occurs to me just now that perhaps this is how we make our friends immortal. All those individual stories become part of a collective memory that we can later dip into when thinking of our friend. Michael, then, becomes more than he ever was to any one of us, which just maybe helps us to see more of who he was to us all. Like Edward Bloom in the movie Big Fish, who becomes at his death the mythical creature he believed he was--larger than his one life, in other words--Michael exists now in our lives