THE LAST time I really talked with him, Mark Brzozowski was leaving my townhouse after an evening complete with conversation, music and a keg of Rolling Rock. He, of course, couldn't quite partake in the debauchery, but I certainly could and did. He left after what now seems a phenomenally short visit.
The next time I saw him, he was in a bed, breathing arduously, battling his cancer with struggled sleep. He died early in the morning. He was 19.
I reread "The Waste Land" this spring, and the poem struck a whole new chord. I never really understood Section IV, but suddenly it began to make sense. T.S. Eliot tells the tragedy of the forgotten Phlebas, who has died and is entombed in the sea, unknown to all but the author. Phlebas, being Phoenician, serves as an inspiration of sorts for the poet, who has the deceased's people to thank for the letters with which he crafts his writing. No one but he seems to remember the gift. He offers a jarring closing command to the short section: "O you who turn the wheel and look to windward, / Consider Phlebas, who was once handsome and tall as you."
Dave Matthews said it a little less poetically: "Eat, drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die."
I suppose that's the lesson to remember as I graduate from the University: that everything is important and everything matters and I've got to get all that I can while the getting is still good.
This means drowning myself in literature, which I've done substantially over the past four years, whether at The Cavalier Daily, in the fabulous classes I've taken, or in pulp magazines like People or Cosmo, which I don't have the heart to buy, but when my roommate does, I zip through cover to cover.
It's hitting the road to visit friends, to simply see the sights in Virginia, or to speed home to see the people I miss most.
It means hanging out on the Lawn with my nieces when they visit or stumbling through the Venable neighborhood after a particularly lush evening.
It's studying through the night until the eyelids can no longer remain open or trekking from the Rotunda to Homer clad only in Mardi Gras beads.
It means going to bat for a friend who's been down on his luck, facing administrators who portray sympathy but act otherwise.
It's waking up early on a Saturday in April to go to horse races where the horses are far from the attraction.
It's singing the "Good Ol' Song" without adding the disrespectful two-word offensive.
It's living with the same person the Housing folks gave you your first year, and it's wishing you didn't abandon her as you did when you followed your own aspirations to drown all your time helping to run the damn newspaper. It means finally telling her sorry, even if you wait until Graduation Day.
But it also means taking pride in the things you did, like practically living in the basement of Newcomb Hall, clutching blue pens as both tools and weapons. It means finding happiness in a perhaps-trivial award like the Pacemaker. It means coining a term like Big White Tent, and decrying its existence. It's laughing so hard with four great friends and co-workers when the People's Strudel is ordered, when Dan Cooper's "dad" or Mike Greenwald's "boyfriend" shows up to a meeting. It means being introduced as a "bad ass" by a former Jeff Society president in an invitation-only charity mini-golf tournament.
It's getting angry at the idiots in ENTC 311 who rustled their backpacks hastily when the brilliant Prof. Jennifer Wicke couldn't help but go over the allotted time. It means hearing her great closings even if you have to strain.
It's befriending a figure like Larry J. Sabato and realizing the human side of professors. It's feeling the enthusiasm for their subjects in instructors like Bob Hueckstedt, Stephen Cushman, Michael Levenson, Chuck Mathewes, Jennie Donnellon and Javier Durán-Barceló. It's seeing the incomparable Dean Aaron Laushway in line next to you in Harris Teeter or sharing a conversation with Jack Ackerly or noticing that you have pretty much the same watch as President Casteen.
And it means coming up with, after decades of education, a surprisingly short list of the things I can say I truly know. And they are: God exists. I believe in love. Abortion is wrong. So is capital punishment. The English language is gorgeous. I miss Mark. Silence, exile and cunning are some serious arms. Bono is sexy, even at 40. I am lucky to be a Kane. Coke is it.
And, last, but not least, I'm honored to have attended the University of Virginia.
(Emily Kane is a former Managing Editor and Arts & Entertainment editor.)
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