Willow Campbell

Jack

Jack is a nice name and a good one for him, but nobody called him that until he was dead. He told his family about it in hospice. In his house, last Christmas, the bathroom smelled like vomit and nobody said anything and I pretended not to notice. Did I leave him or did he leave me?

“June, I mean, Jack wanted you to know he loves you and you were his best friend and your friendship meant so much to him,” his sister, Lauren, tells me over the phone. “He got his wish. He got married to Mark the night before.”

I didn’t answer her first call. I knew what she had to tell me.

The next day I feel okay. But on Christmas I don’t. And after The Normal Heart I don’t. In the end, Vincent marries Ned and they love each other but he still dies of AIDS. Are funerals for the dead?

At Jack’s birthday dinner, last March, his plate stayed empty and nobody said anything and I pretended that was fine. We danced together in his basement and now I’m wondering will his headstone say June or Jack. 

Willow Campbell holds a B.S. in Filmmaking from Kent State University. In 2020, they wrote the short film “Bending” which went on to premiere at The New York Lift-Off Film Festival and was chosen as an Official Selection at the My True Colors Film Festival in NYC. Willow is an emerging writer, 24 years old, and lives in Cleveland, Ohio. Find them on Instagram: @unbroken.blue.