The Death of a friend (n.) turns every private joke into something only one person gets.
The Death of a friend (n.) gets you a seat near the back of a funeral, behind a family that does not know your name.
The Death of a friend (n.) is a loss you are expected to be back at work for.
The Death of a friend (n.) leaves you holding stories with no one left alive who was there for them.
The Death of a mother (n.) hands the family's birthday list to whichever child notices first.
The Death of a mother (n.) turns her handwriting on a recipe card into the most valuable thing in the house.
The Death of a mother (n.) ends a childhood you did not know was still running.
The Death of a mother (n.) removes the last person who remembers you before you were any good at anything.
The Death of a parent (n.) is an inheritance of silence where advice used to live.
The Death of a parent (n.) is like losing the only translator for the language you were raised in.
The Death of a parent (n.) ends the last audience that was watching your whole life.
The Death of a parent (n.) arrives with a mountain of paperwork, and the paperwork is the mercy.
Disappearance (n.) has two routes today: insisting on not being seen, or flaunting one's own nullity until one vanishes in plain sight.
Disappearance (n.) is a craft: you have to know how to vanish, and the whole of art's modernity lies in that skill.
Disappearance (n.) staged in advance is how many things now stay alive: they prove they exist by rehearsing their own funeral.
Disappearance (n.) today is metaphysical: everything is available and nothing has vanished physically, but everything has disappeared metaphysically.