A funeral. A man eulogising a stranger. The stranger's family sitting with head bowed, tears streaming down their faces. My friend among them. I don't believe in God, reincarnation or any of the other palliatives that one takes to survive the crushing blow of such loss. All i see is my friend sitting there crying renewed tears with every anecdote told about her father.
I wonder if i'll be there when my parents need me to hold their hand. Or will i typically run away, choosing to block out reality, hoping the calvinesque move will restore things to how they were. I will miss my mother's laugh even though she can drive me insane somedays. My father... I worry that all my unresolved things with him will remain so. Mostly because a resolution requires an acceptance of the problem. He doesn't believe there is any problem. I hope my brother is somewhere nearby as we can always laugh, even at the macabre.
I wonder if anyone will grieve for me. More importantly, I wonder if there will be anyone whose hand i shall hold as i breathe my last, tell them i love them and know that it made a difference to them knowing that.
Or shall i be alone, contemplating the loss of a life i never had? Does any of this matter when we are dead?
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They die - the dead return not - Misery
Sits near an open grave and calls them over,
A Youth with hoary hair and haggard eye -
They are the names of kindred, friend and lover
Which he so feebly called - they all are gone!
- Percy Bysshe Shelley
Have you read Michael Redhill's Consolation? Or Anne Enright's The Gathering? Which goes:
"I was living my life in inverted commas. I could pick up my keys and go 'home' where I could 'have sex' with my 'husband' just like lots of other people did. This is what I have been doing for years. And I didn't seem to mind the inverted commas, or even notice that I was living in them, until my brother died"
Such a revelation on death and determinism...
Post of gloom, gloomier comment. Sorry.
T.O.
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