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On Death & Dating

Morgan Rose-Marie

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It is fall 2016. The single, sky-blue folder sitting in the top-right corner of my desktop antagonizes me. 

The white letters of its title spell “Megan”—the name of one of my closest friends. I met her at work—she taught biology in the classroom next to the one where I taught English before brain cancer forced her to return home. 

I created the folder weeks ago when I got the news she was sick again, that her remission was just a three-year stay on a death sentence. It is filled with photographs and journal entries, and I can’t bring myself to move it from my desktop. 

When I visited my family for the Christmas holidays last year, my high school-aged sister spent a concerning number of hours each night glued to the screen of her iPad. Glancing over her shoulder, I caught a glimpse of the red Netflix banner and asked what she was watching. She launched into a passionate speech about her “OTP” in Vampire Diaries. 

I stared dumbly. All I could think of was ATP from high school biology, which made me think of Megan. “What is ‘OTP’?” 

“Your one true pair!” She smiled in patient disbelief. 

When I was a kid, we called it a “ship” (from “relationship”)—a fictional couple you hoped would achieve the happily ever after that you wanted for yourself. 

While Megan is in hospice, I start seeing a therapist. She tells me I need to work on being present.

I try prioritizing relationships. Despite my belief that love the is reason for being, I am terrible at maintaining relationships. I’m almost thirty and I’ve been avoiding dating altogether. Suddenly I want to. I want, almost need, to find someone with whom I can be present. 

I create Tinder account.

I type a generic bio—everyone is about adventures around here. 

Then I start swiping. 

It sounds so simple. Except I have suddenly “super-liked”—and seriously what does that even mean?—someone whom I do not find remotely attractive. Then I accidentally swipe left on a very attractive guy and agonize over the potential loss of my one true love.

I wish I could say I was under the influence of alcohol. Preferably blackout drunk. I don’t think the trace amounts of alcohol in Kombucha count, but can we pretend they do?

Tinder alerts me to matches, and a few message me. The first guy calls me “hun” and “sugar” within three texts. I should have stopped there. When he says he works on trucks and I mention I have one, he says I’m lucky to have found him. After a second request for a picture, I stop responding.

Another guy asks if I’m a girly girl. I refrain from giving him a professorial lecture on the social construction of gender identity and tell him that I am not. He responds by asking if I’m into heels. When I reply, “God, no, I hate heels,” he asks how many I have. Asks what they are like. Asks me to bring them out on a date. I want to tell him he can have all three of my pairs, but instead I log off.

Day 1 Without Megan
I am in the middle of a three-hour internship shift when my phone gets a text message. The 970 area code is all I need to know what this means. 

I read: “Pls give me a call when you are in a good space.” 

Time is something we never have enough of. 

Office hours. Advisor meeting. Workshop class. Jiu-jitsu training. Finally, on the way to my truck, I punch the 970 area code into my phone.

Megan’s mother answers. “I think you probably know what this is about.”

I do.

I learn Megan died last night. For the last 24 hours I’ve been living in a world without her, and I had no idea.

The beat of my heart feels labored, and I fear if I stop thinking about it beating, it’ll stop. I count and I count and I keep counting. 

I got drunk for the first time in my life last Friday. Before I threw up every ounce of vodka I had choked down, a guy asked me to dance. His energy was electric. He asked for my number. 

Day 2 Without Megan
I wake up like I usually do. It’s not until the text messages on my phone demand responses that I realize Megan didn’t wake up this morning.

I text the news to a few people.

As I drive to campus and walk to class, images slip through my brain like oysters down a throat, temporarily choking me before settling in heavy lumps in my stomach. 

I see:

her amused smile, the corner of one turned up, like she’s trying to keep from laughing, never at you (even if you deserved it, which was most of the time). 

her small hands, palms facing inward, all five fingers pinched together at their tips—dropping down in exasperation as she says, “Students,” in warning. It’s a gesture I replicate in my own classroom now.

her index finger pushing her eyeglasses up her nose. As the tumor grew, it forced her body to repeat this motion even though she no longer wore glasses.

I make it to class, and my sports psychology professor hands back our tests. I’ve earned a perfect score and the world seems perfectly absurd. Next class we’ll be talking about the benefits of exercise in cancer patients. 

That afternoon I sit in a chair opposite my therapist. I take a deep breath and exhale the news that Megan died. That I haven’t actually had time to sit with this news. That I’ve had class and homework and all of these things have taken priority because they have to be done and this makes her death seem insignificant because these other things are insignificant yet are commanding my attention. I cry the rest of the hour.

My therapist tells me it’s okay to take time for myself. 

I think that I know this, but when I leave her office, I realize how freeing her permission is. I cancel a movie date with the dancing guy.

I may have late-onset ADHD. I try to watch a TV show, and ten minutes into it, I will start working on some other project. Thirty minutes later I realize I’ve missed so much that I have no idea what the plot is. 

The one exception had been Game of Thrones. I watched season six over the summer and finale was my favorite episode. A few minutes of subtle flirting between two queens gave birth to a new fandom—and I found myself a part of it. Scrolling obsessively through tumblr, I happened upon comparisons to another couple: Clexa.

I googled.

“Clexa” refers to the coupling of Clarke, the female protagonist of a show called “The 100,” and Lexa, her enemy and eventual lover. I watched all three seasons in the span of two weeks. I watched the showrunner kill off Lexa in the same episode she and Clarke sleep together. 

Day 3 Without Megan
“Not today” becomes my refrain.

I scroll #Clexa on social media. I discover posts titled “Day (insert number) Without Lexa” as fans mourn her death and departure from the show. It’s at once discouraging to know that this sort of pain lasts for so long (it’s been more than 6 months since she was killed off) and at the same time encouraging to see the movement her character has inspired. From her death was born, “We Deserved Better,” an organization dedicated to advocating for responsible queer representation in the media.

The posts protesting Lexa’s death make me wish I could protest Megan’s. Is there some universal court I can bow before? I want there to be a God if only to beg him to rethink this decision. Or at least choke him by the collar of his white tunic until he explains it.

I create an OKCupid account and set my preferences on both to display both men and women. I type a generic bio and start searching. Almost every woman says she won’t message first, and that when you message her, it better be more than “hi.” 

Day 4 Without Megan
I attend class and learn how exercise improves cancer patients’ quality of life. I remember walking laps around the high school track with Megan when she was first undergoing treatment 3 years ago. I remember asking her what she believed. I don’t remember her answer, but I know she didn’t have faith.

A month ago, when I visited her with a mutual friend, that friend tried to tell Megan that Jesus was waiting with open arms for her. In a rare moment of clarity and speech, Megan dismissed her: “I can’t argue with you.”

I can’t be present, despite my therapist’s recommendation.

I fumble teaching my classes and admit to my students that my mind is elsewhere. I skip sparring at the dojo. I go home and choke on my sobs instead.

Sleep is just a dream. Unable to reach it, I log onto OKCupid. I scroll. I decline matches. I star a profile. Decline another. I star a profile with 90% compatibility. Decline more. My mind slows. I fall asleep before I turn off my computer.

Day 5 Without Megan
When I wake, I feel like someone has brought me back to life with a defibrillator

I check my email and find my match from last night has messaged me. How’s your weekend going? I’m almost too shocked to be happy. Almost. 

Today is day one of a two-day I Liq Chuan seminar that my jiu jitsu training partner is hosting. I Liq Chuan, an offshoot of tai chi, is the martial art of awareness. It’s the practice of being mindful and present. 

Two hours into the six-hour day, I stop seeing the instructor demonstrating how to stand in a balanced posture, and instead see Megan, dropping her hands in exasperation, exhaling an admonishment.

At the break, I find my training partner and choke out the excuse that I can’t concentrate, that I won’t be returning for the second day of the workshop.

Day 6 Without Megan
Sunday morning my match asks if I have plans. I tell her I am attending an antique fairytale performance in town. She asks if she can come.

Her name is Kit. We talk books (she’s into Russian literature now; I like Krakauer always); music (she doesn’t think country is country anymore; I confess my love for Taylor Swift); TV (she likes American Horror Story; I hesitantly endorse Quantico based on season 1 only). 

Being near her is both comfortable and comforting. During the fairy tale performance, I find myself losing track of the narrative as I study her out of the corner of my eye. 

After the date, she sends a text that she wanted to hold my hand but feared hers was sweaty. My stomach flips. I realize being near her might not actually be that comfortable, and maybe that’s not such a bad thing. 

Day 7 Without Megan, Day 1 Since Kit
My MacBook crashes, so I spend an hour in the tech support center on campus. The guys can’t figure anything out, so I look up the nearest Apple store and learn it’s an hour away. I’m about to cry when I realize how stupid this problem is. How much better this Monday is than last Monday.

By some miracle, my computer starts working right before class. 

There’s another file on my desktop that I don’t know what to do with. A Word document containing Kit’s profile copied and pasted from OKCupid. I don’t know where to put it. Part of me wants it there in plain sight where I can enjoy the pleasant flipping of my stomach it triggers. I also want to hide it, to swallow down these feelings climbing up my throat before they choke me.

Day 9 Without Megan, Day 3 Since Kit
My therapist wants to know what has been going well in my life.

My face registers panic. I tell her I’m not ready for that conversation, nodding at the tissue box between us. 

When the topic I’m avoiding right now first came up, she turned this a tissue box into metaphor. For a while, I couldn’t see this thing at all. Now I can see it but only in my peripheral vision. I can barely acknowledge it. The goal is to get close enough to touch it.

When I first signed up for counseling sessions, I had to answer dozens of intake questions that would be considered in bad taste to pose in polite conversation. I understood, though, how the history of my depression and eating disorder could inform my treatment plan. Still, it wasn’t any of the short answer questions that took me the longest to complete. It was a question with a drop-down menu of choices from which to select. 

What is your sexual orientation?

I had answered this question many times over the course of my life without thought. This time it gave me pause, and that pause told me a lot I wasn’t prepared for.    

On my way to the dojo from my counseling appointment, my phone buzzes with a text message. A friend has just reactivated iMessage on her computer and the first text she saw was one from Megan—“Have you talked to Morgan about meese? She is also a fan!” I had seen a moose for the first time when I visited Megan the summer after her initial diagnosis.

I imagine my skin resembles the pallor of the ghost that has just touched me.

That night my training partner philosophizes about the Zen roots of I Liq Chuan. Suffering is a result of attachment. By recognizing all attachments are ephemeral and accepting the evanescence of life, we can avoid pain.

I tell him that’s hard.

He says that’s why we have to practice.

I smile sadly and think, “No.” 

I choose love. And so I choose pain.

I have a voicemail saved on my phone. 

Megan’s voice greets me and asks about the procedure for consolidating her retirement from the school system where we both taught. She is articulate, but now I hear a subtle urgency in her voice that I didn’t originally notice.

I wonder what went through her mind as she got her finances in order. If she knew what was coming. I hope not. God, I hope not.

Week 2 Without Megan, Week 1 Since Kit
I’m cleaning my apartment. It’s productive procrastination. It is also necessary if I ever want to invite Kit over.

As I file cards away, I find one from November of last year. The front is white, with the shapes of flowers and butterflies cut from it. A deep blue inlay brings the garden image into sharp relief.

Dear Morgan,
This was going to be a back-to-school gift, and then a birthday gift, but the beginning of the school arrived and I am only now catching my breath. Coaching and teaching is crazy, as you well know.

I miss navigating the crazy with you.

I hope the start of your next step is smooth and wonderful. It seems like this is such a long-awaited change, but still difficult. I hope you are where you want to be, doing things you want to do.

Same, Megan.

I imagine that you are reading and writing. I imagine you have a good window to sit beside and think. I imagine you are enjoying living in town. I hope you are running. I hope you have found your people.

I think I have.

Have you read anything excellent lately? I have been listening to bits and pieces of audiobooks (there’s a great app called overdrive) but it’s not the same. I think there is something about holding a book that matters.

A physical presence does matter. I miss yours.

I love you and I miss you. Thank you again for graduation last spring. We will have to see each other soon.

I’m sorry it wasn’t soon enough.

xoxo Megan

On our second date, we hold hands throughout Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children. I covet the fictional time loop that allows the children to live one day repeatedly, stuck but safe in time. I want to go back, save Megan, and stow her in an infinite loop with me.

When Kit kisses me goodnight, whispering that she doesn’t want to stop, I want the time loop for an entirely different reason.

That night I’ll read from The Things They Carried: “How crazy it was that people who were so incredibly alive could get so incredibly dead.” 

I still can’t comprehend that Megan isn’t here with me.

I also am having a hard time believing that Kit is.

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Morgan Rose-Marie is a queer writer and an Assistant Professor at Utah Valley University. She serves as an assistant editor for Brevity. She has a PhD from Ohio University and an MA from Colorado State University. Her work has been featured in The Normal School, Heavy Feather Review, Tampa Review, and Pleiades, among others—some of which can be found at morganrosemarie.com.

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