Pat Dugan……..my grandfather……..throat cancer……..1947.
Ed Berrigan……..my dad……..heart attack……..1958.
Dickie Budlong……..my best friend Brucie’s big brother, when we were
five to eight……..killed in Korea, 1953.
Red O’Sullivan……..hockey star & cross-country runner
who sat at my lunch table
in High School……car crash……1954.
Jimmy “Wah” Tiernan……..my friend, in High School,
Football & Hockey All-State……car crash….1959.
Cisco Houston……..died of cancer……..1961.
Freddy Herko, dancer….jumped out of a Greenwich Village window
in 1963.
Anne Kepler….my girl….killed by smoke-poisoning while playing
the flute at the Yonkers Children’s Hospital
during a fire set by a 16 year old arsonist….1965.
Frank……Frank O’Hara……hit by a car on Fire Island, 1966.
Woody Guthrie……dead of Huntington’s Chorea in 1968.
Neal……Neal Cassady……died of exposure, sleeping all night
in the rain by the RR tracks of Mexico….1969.
Franny Winston……just a girl….totalled her car on the Detroit-Ann Arbor
Freeway, returning from the dentist….Sept. 1969.
Jack……Jack Kerouac……died of drink & angry sickness….in 1969.
My friends whose deaths have slowed my heart stay with me now.
Ted Berrigan, “People Who Died” from The Collected Poems of Ted Berrigan. Copyright © 2007 by Ted Berrigan.
Words for the Year 
He wrote more about Pepsi than any poet I’ve read!
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Funny given how he mentions Frank O’Hara (his “Sharing a Coke” poem….which I don’t think I’ve run here, so thanks for the idea 😉 ) and thanks for the comment!
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“My first husband Ted Berrigan, died in July 1983 at the age of 48 in our apartment from diet pill abuse. I was 37. And we had two sons.” – Alice Notley
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One day or another, every one of our names will be on a list like Ted’s…including our own.
Reminds me of a Merwin poem I like…”On the Anniversary of My Death”.
(Thank you for the ideas.)
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What a poignant poem! I really like this one, Christy! Thank you for sharing this! 🙂
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Poignant indeed. Mike. I mean, I know people die every day—to be totally pragmatic about it—but it sure seems we’ve been losing some good ones—famous and not— every time we turn around.
Such is life. Everything is eventual.
Hope you and your wife are well. ❤️
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Thank you, Christy! I hope you and your husband are well! ❤
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