too many of these lately

El Dia de los Muertos comes every year and every year it reminds me that I have been taught about death in certain ways.

I have a certain contribution to make whenever we discuss endings.

I wrote this piece in August last year and then uncovered it on the occasion of two very sad and very unexpected deaths. I didn't know the two who passed away, only the way their friends and families remember them. But I know a lot about death... more than I care to know, more than I thought I knew until it came pouring out last year and stayed relevant after all this time...
I don't know what you're going through but I do know this much...
and I hope that might be a little helpful.

080109:

There are days when I wish the story would end. Entire days devoted to frustration because the mystery of you is complete, but refuses to go away; I am haunted by the loss of you. And I have to live with memories that are just not enough.

Like this feeling when a relationship carries on with only a dead body, with a voice that I won’t hear again, with two arms that will never hold me again, two hands that will never pour out a beer or clutch the steering wheel as we careen down the highway,

the kind and hilarious things you said to me echo in my heart, but only there and it is proof that this heart is empty, cavernous, stone, cold and hardening with every throbbing pumping jerking motion, and it doesn’t stop just because yours has. You aren’t going to call anymore, you are not going to comfort me even over the phone anymore. I have missed you before, assumed your voice is enough, convinced myself it was but
now even that is gone.

And I am not ashamed (because you taught me to be proud of who I am) to admit that I am shrinking and filled with regret. Worst of all, sometimes I wish I had never loved you. I want to rewrite the story so it would end before you walked into that bar, before you jumped into that river to save a life more precious than your own.

And I am not ashamed to cry over it because that is all my body wants to do now. I can’t sleep or eat because I am somehow keeping vigil, holding on to the last meal we shared, the last restful night when I was assured I would see you in the very next day.

I can’t even hope anymore, not in the same things I used to, because all my hopes were wrapped up in you.

I can’t see the future because it was in your face and now we will bury it under the days that keep unfolding without regard for your disappearance and we will keep only photographs. And I will wake up tomorrow and stare at the photos and then
Perhaps I will start in with the yelling, the telling you off, the crying out to God or my friends or my lovers because it is not fair, it is not right, it is not ok that you aren’t coming around anymore.

So here we are, those you abandoned unwillingly, maybe. We are waiting for signs, for friendly faces, for warm bodies, for snacks and laughter and for it all to mean something again. We need something to boss us into hoping again. We need you.

And because all we have, is an already fading memory of what you would have wanted, I am clinging to it.

We begrudgingly admit that we know what you would have said. We know what you would have done because we know what you did:
you saw a choice and you made it.
You knew a risk and you took it.
You saw danger and you jumped right in.
You saw pain and you did all you could to end it.

Forgive us our anger—we know you can. And forgive us our sadness and our hopelessness—we know that if you could, you would hold us and tell us everything is going to be okay. We know you would cringe to see how upset we are and we know one thing for sure,
if you could you would rescue all of us from all of this.

I guess that is the work left for us to do now, in your absence, in your honor. We will keep you alive and with us by remembering
to rescue, to risk, to live, to play and laugh.
And when we forget the timber of your voice, or wonder what would have been,
we will remember, we will comfort ourselves with this fact:
you didn’t give up hope, you were unafraid of your own death, you were bold and loving and hopeful, and we can be too because you showed us how.