| | Death has entered my life, and I feel the need to write flow through me.
An uncle, I guess, though with extended family, it gets a little fuzzy. Uncle serves as a description, though. Hit by a train, around this time last night. I saw him at Thanksgiving, while in Oregon, and I didn't know him very well, but family is family.
Odd, because I know his parents much better, and his sister and her kids, and I can only imagine what they must be feeling right now. Cousins to me, one of them wrote about the reactions of his mother and father when they heard, and its reading that description of her reading the note that sticks with me the most. Losing a child? My parent's reaction is enough for me try and grasp the immensity of that feeling, but I cannot fathom it. Losing a sibling?
That, I dare not try and imagine.
November, December, January, February, and three people I have personally known have died. And when the old die, it is sad, and I'm not comparing or rating anything, but it is expected. We all, eventually, accept the inevitability of death, whether as my grandfather, who fought till the very end, or my grandmother, at peace when she finally died. But we don't accept it to come quickly or suddenly. My friend's dad? My mom's age.
Expect it, even. Appropriate typo, anyways.
A train, a fucking train. Hits a man I know, utterly destroying him and tearing from his family a piece that will never be filled. Parents lose a son, a sister loses a brother, two nephews lose an uncle, and it goes on and on.
When did death become part of my life? When did people I know, people much too young for me to expect it, start to die? When did they start becoming so old that I began to expect it?
Cancer, old age, disease, FUCKING TRAINS.... the sheer callousness, the unbelievable power of all that is arrayed against this fragile little conceit we call life is so immense, so utterly uncaring.
It almost seems wrong that we ever get over it, but what else can we do? There's no lessons to learn, no mistakes to rectify, no vengeance to enact, no wisdom to be gained. People die. Life ends. So it has been, so it shall always be.
How are we supposed to accept that? How do we face the massive jaws of death and keep going? How can we, when you look, and realize that they are all children. Every single person is someone else's child, someone else's hopes and dreams and love, or the pure absence of, made manifest? And very child looks, and realizes this. Every child stares into that void, and the cold bites deep and does not let go, it will never let go. So we build a suit of armor and call ourselves adults, but the cold is still there, we just can't feel it anymore.
- Death cannot be struggled against, brother. It ever arrives, defiant of every hiding place, of every frantic attempt to escape. Death is every mortal's shadow, his true shadow, and time is its servant, spinning that shadow slowly round, until what stretched before one now stretched before him.
How long till someone my age dies? And who? Its like a morbid guessing game that no one plays, but people get to the end regardless.
We remember the dead; they give us reason to live.
Let's play a game.
'Let's not.'
Among the Fallen, who-
'The answer is children, wind. More children than anyone else.'
Then where is your despair?
'You understand nothing,' he said, pausing to spit. 'For a man or woman to reach adulthood, they must first kill the child within them.'
You are a most vicious man, soldier.
'You still understand nothing. I have just confessed my despair, wind. You win the game. You win every game. But I will march on, into your icy breath, because that's what soldiers do.'
Odd, it does not feel as if I have won.
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| | Posted 2/27/2009 11:41 PM - 1 View - 0 eProps - 0 comments
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