A member of our chorus passed away a few weeks ago. He was 33 years old. He died of cancer.

He was sick for a year and a half. During that time, he got sick and went to the hospital, got better and left the hospital, and then got sick and went to the hospital again. During that entire time, I never visited him in the hospital. Not once. I deeply regret this. I kept intending to visit, but I “never got around to it.” I didn’t even know when he was nearing the end. During the announcements in the middle of rehearsal a few weeks ago, our conductor told us that Devin had passed away the night before. I had to leave the room as unobtrusively as possible because my eyes were welling up and they wouldn’t stop.

The last time I saw Devin was at a friend’s birthday party last year. It was at the end of October, so it was the same night as numerous Halloween parties, and he showed up in costume. He was dressed as a fairy “godfather” – he wore a light-blue fairy outfit, complete with wings, with black boots on his feet, a bowler hat on his head, and an unlit cigar in his mouth.

Our chorus is singing at a memorial service for him on Friday. We rehearsed the pieces last night, and a few former members joined us, as they will on Friday. It was nice to see them.

Afterwards, several of us went to the bar across the street, as some of the guys always do after rehearsal. It was my first time at the bar this fall – I just felt a need to hang out with some of my fellow singers. It was pretty somber. Not completely, but more somber than usual, and lots of talk of cancer and dying young.

I didn’t know Devin as well as some of the other guys in the group did. I didn’t really see him outside of rehearsal. Still, I didn’t sleep well last night. I kept drifting in and out of dreams about Devin and some of the other chorus members. I woke up several times.

Sometimes it’s not that death is sad, so much as that it’s profound. It’s hard for the human mind to contemplate an absence. An absence is, by nature, intangible. How do you register that? Especially when the presence who’s now absent was so young?

It’s not easy.