No pithy title: ("two deaths and an interview")

Interviews are strangely divorced from real life: you fly to a new place, meet a slate of new people, and they make a decision about whether they want to work with you for the next 1-3 years, while being legally bound not to ask about normal issues like family, friends, religion, deep questions. I had an interview that began bright and early in the morning, almost simultaneously with my friend's death. It's painful to think about. I found out about his death after the first day of interviews, and impulsively checked out of my hotel and rushed to the town where there was a memorial gathering that night hosted by my friend's graduate school department. I stayed up talking quietly with friends, left at 5 the next morning, and made it to the rest of the interview, thoughts of theodicy filling my head as we spoke about his research interests.



My (much older) friend's 80-something year old father had just died of cancer, and I wanted to be able to be there to comfort him. At the last minute, I got invited to an interview just a couple hours away from my former city, which exactly coincided with being able to attend. I flew into my former city, came straight there, and spent the afternoon and evening with my friend and others who came. I didn't intend it this way, but it turned out to be a good way to catch up with other friends whom I hadn't kept well-enough in touch with.

I had made some lunch plans to meet my friend Barbara and her husband after my interview, and while we were all standing around talking, Barbara asked her husband pretty loudly if he was free to join us for lunch, right in front of two people whom I had somewhat complicated relationships with: a guy and a girl. My immediate panic was that the girl would feel left out; she was Barbara's best friend and the one who liked Gene and asked my permission to date him. Because Gene and I had been somewhat involved already, I said I thought it might be awkward, and then he started dating someone else. I was afraid she would blame me that she'd missed her chances with him; she didn't know that Gene had decided a year before that he was going to marry the girl he'd just started dating. In this panic, I asked complicated-girl if she would want to join.

The guy was complicated because of something involving a very close friend's romantic life: he now had a long-time girlfriend, but it still truly hurt her feelings to be reminded of his existence, so gradually I saw him less and less though we'd been closer before. I only saw him at very large gatherings, or when it was just a few people and a foreign movie. She was unusually sensitive, but what could I do: as tempting as it is, you can't argue with feelings. Besides, I'd wanted to stay unambitious on the visit since interviews are hard: if I asked him, his girlfriend would be a natural addition, and perhaps others, and that was too many people. So I kept speaking with this guy, catching up about his life, his girlfriend, his dissertation, and feeling slightly guilty for not inviting him along. When it was time for him to go, I noticed him putting on his coat and rushed to the door to escort him out and exchange a few more vague pleasantries, to reassure him that I really do like him and I really didn't mean to slight him, though obviously not saying anything of the sort, probably just making vague plans to catch up later in my visit, separately.

In the early evening, I set off for my interview and my next day was quite pleasant. My interviewer was the sort who believed in really hosting candidates, so I was constantly accompanied. He took me on a tour of the campus, and we stopped to look at a striking sculpture, he told me about the evolution of his career, and I was completely charmed. We ended early for the day, and I had a couple of hours for a nap before meeting up with the only person I knew in this city, a guy I'd met on a dating site without ever meeting in person; he had since gotten involved in a relationship, but I did want to pick his brain about the city. I checked my email. The night before, I'd debated whether to pay for the hotel's internet and decided against, but somehow managed to find a wireless signal for a neighboring business which had a guest band.

I read email by eliminating the ones I definitely need to delete, and this time I started with "Tragic news" from a graduate school organization in my prior city. These usually announce the death of a grandparent or a professor I'd never met. Naturally, the way I've set up the story, it's not a surprise. A friend in my former city --- the one I'd had vague feelings of guilt for not asking him to lunch, but mostly allayed them --- died less than 12 hours after I last spoke with him. I screamed. All the cliches about not believing terrible news, rereading it, and the simultaneous descent of mental fog and amazing clarity, apply here.

The clarity let me pack, email my interviewer and the dating-site-guy I was supposed to meet that night, figure out travel arrangements, and return to my former city in time for a memorial gathering in his graduate department. I was grateful for people's unexpected kindness. I blurted out the circumstances to the hotel, and asked if the department could get credit; they hesitated initially, and I said that I didn't really care since it wasn't my money, but I thought it would be nicer for them, and they agreed not to charge the department for the second night. It's helpful to be able to dispense with tact and get straight to the point when it's beyond you.

My close friend who had had romantic issues with this guy needed company; she felt enormously guilty and weird. It's a bit ironic, actually: when people die, we think of the girlfriend/wife, the best friend. We don't often think of the girl who'd struggled with romantic feelings that she wished she didn't still have, in that continual struggle between affection and dislike. I was grateful to be there to just spend time with her, so she didn't have to be alone in her apartment. Others needed the presence of reassuring company as well.

The next morning, I left while it was still dark to get back to my interview: it was just a 1 hour appointment with someone who hadn't been free the previous day, but it seemed important to let life go on. Doing something other than my usual routine would make me feel worse, and that was how everyone dealt with it: everyone woke up the next day and went to work. I arrived in the city almost 2 hours before the interview was supposed to start, so dawdled a bit. I glanced at the papers in the newsstand to read the story of my friend's death and discovered awful details. I had no idea where I was going --- the interview was in a different building --- but it was too early in the morning to call my host so I looked at a map in the newsstand, learned I was just a mile away, so bought the map and walked to the interview, arriving early.


Without the interview's timing (that I had no control over), I would have not seen my friend before his death or been able to comfort my friends, so I felt very grateful for the coincidence. On the other hand, his sudden death was random as well, and actually even moreso. Ah, theodicy.