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epitome of incomprehensibility
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I'm graduating from Concordia (again). After the ceremony, I walk past a display of tables with Concordia-related information. One is about "legacy" donations - people who left things to the university in their wills - and I see three small, glossy posters of profiled donors. Two show older people, but one has a young-looking woman who died before she finished her PhD and left what she had to the school.
It shows sensitivity and/or strategy to profile people who weren't necessarily rich, I think. But mostly I'm sad that this person died young.
Her first name is Pat. I pick up her poster and it's now a scrapbook. The last pages have photos from her trip across Asia. I think, "Well, maybe she had money after all."
The doctorate that she never finished was in psychology, something about reducing the mortality of mental illnesses. I look up and ask the person at the table a question that, in real_life, would be none of my business - is that because the topic affected her personally and did she die by suicide?
The woman behind the table shakes her head and points at the book in my hands.
I see a photo Pat laughing and wading in water, one of several pictures from Indonesia. "Oh," I go. "Did she die in a plane crash?"
I don't know why I say "plane crash," out of all possible accidents, but the woman nods. "You know the Bali disaster."
I don't know the Bali disaster. But I nod anyway.
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