"Tell your friend that in his death, a part of you dies and goes with him. Wherever he goes, you also go. He will not be alone." • Jiddu Krishnamurti
One day, we will all be dead.
Me. You.
Friends. Family.
Parents. Kids.
All of us - dead.
I don't know why we spend so much of our time hiding from Death. Why it terrifies us so much. Maybe it is the sterility of modern Western traditions regarding Death and mourning. We don't hold, wash or dress the body. We don't lay our own bodies across the corpse and weep for our loss. We don't celebrate the ancestors and their traditions. We have made everything so sterile. So white. So unfeeling and cold.
I long to wash and bathe and dress your body when you've finally left it. I want to brush your hair and tell you all my most intimate and private thoughts as I wash the form that once contained YOU. I want to possess your remains, even briefly. They are mine. I will not surrender them to any other. I will pass them on only to the flame, as I watch that frame crumble to blackened ashes and dust.
I hate how clean and sterile we have made all of this. I find myself unable to process the pain and grief and finality of it all. I can't move on. I can't continue.
"The worst feeling in the world is not losing your friend forever, but rather having patronizing people tell you that the love you have for your friend and the connection and emotion you have towards them is an illness to be cured, a problem to be covered up and hidden away." • Rebecca McNutt
One of the most hurtful things I have ever heard came to me with the best of intentions. I was in the middle of a devastating loss, and someone sincerely offered as comfort that my loved one who had passed was now with our other loved ones and used trite aphorisms about God needing an angel more than we needed them here on Earth.
Fuck that. I find that totally and utterly unwelcome as the sentiment to share with me. Fuck you for even saying it aloud. Fuck your superstition. Fuck your religion. Fuck your God. I will burn this all down right now if you keep up this idiocy. Fuck you.
I don't need to hear about how much Harry missed Joey while he was up there on his cloud, strumming his fucking harp. Fuck you.
And another thing. Joey and Harry were perfectly loved exactly as they were here on Earth. If there is a Heaven, they aren't "made whole" now, as if their disabilities made them less than fully human. I didn't love Joe or Harry (or anyone else) IN SPITE of their disabilities. I loved them WITH their disabilities. Take away his impish grin, his mispronounced words, his little quirks and eccentricities that are a result of his autism, and Joe's not someone I would even recognize. Take away Harry's attitude and spirit and stubbornness, and he's not the friend I knew for over a decade. No. Fuck you. They weren't broken. They don't need fixed. They were perfect just the way they were.
I have bipolar disorder, OCD, ADHD, and several other diagnoses that make my life difficult at times. But if one single person talks about those things not being part of whatever might happen in the afterlife, they can go fuck themselves. I am who I am because of these struggles. Every fiber of my being buzzes and hums with echoes of these challenges. Take away the humor I see in that unwellness, take away the manic fits of energy and rage, take away the crushing darkness...and what's left? The reason I try to be forgiving and understanding is precisely because I try to extend grace to others that I would like for myself. I'm a fucking mess, but I mean well. And I assume the same of other people. I assume they have good intentions for the most part, but are functioning with another one of these broken brains like mine. I try to extend that grace and understanding. I try to love. To be warm and accepting. These aren't in spite of my illness. They are a function of the illness. So if I go to some sort of Heaven and lose all those challenges, I'm not myself. I would lose so much. I wouldn't be the same person.
So don't tell me that my friend is better off, or with our other friends and family, or that God wanted to hug and kiss him for 10 years longer than the infinity he plans on spending with me and you. Fuck you.
“When people die,’ she said softly, ‘It doesn’t necessarily mean you’re ready to give them up.” • C. A. Belmond
I'm not saying death and loss is ever easy. It's painful. It's crushing. It leaves a throbbing ache in the pit of my stomach and the endless sound of drums in my head. Death is never fun, or simple, or a good time. Death is tragic. But we make things worse, I think.
Being able to touch and hold the body would have been so helpful in the processing of that grief and terror. The loneliness and isolation. That's the worst of it. The cold white sterility makes death so isolating. Alone. Alone. Your body is alone. We die alone, in a hospital bed, surrounded by people with licenses and equipment, but no genuine connection to us. Strangers in white, plying us with cold metal syringes and coiled plastic tubing, always washed and gloved. I want to die at home. Surrounded by my family and friends. Holding hands with the love of my life. Free of the coats and gloves that have come to be part of the death process in our culture. I don't want to be alone, with only my thoughts, as the lights inside me dim and fade into the eternal night.
I felt so lonely. So isolated. Adrift in the vast black ocean. I heard the Dark Mother calling me out to her in the Deepest Waters. Beneath the crashing waves. Down in the blackness. Down where I would be crushed.
“His death brings new experience to my life – that of a wound that will not heal” • Ernst Jünger
I don't expect to ever fully heal. I don't expect to ever move on. Not just from this death, but from any death. It leaves a gnawing ache in the pit of my belly. The only other emotion I can imagine in its place is numbness. That little corner of my heart will always be fragile and painful. But I want to turn it over, ever so gently and carefully, in my hands. Feel the smoothness of it. The rounded edges. I want to roll these familiar memories around and struggle to mesh the joy of the memories with the sorrow of grief and loss. I want TO FEEL. I don't ever want to be numb.
I have never handled death well. I haven't.
The truth is, I feel isolated most of the time. I feel so alone. I don't know how to develop deepness and intimacy in relationships by and large. I don't know how to share my inner life. Death brings that isolation to the front of the line. All the I could haves and I should haves and we would haves come racing through my broken brain and I wish I wasn't this way. I wish I were higher functioning. More capable. Less inept. Not so alone. So isolated.
I have been reading about death acceptance and death positivity, and it has honestly opened my eyes to a lot of the problems that exist in our society in how we process death. The whiteness and sterility, mostly. The smell of disinfectant in the air, and the feel of the cold metal bed rails. That's not what I want.
I want my body to return to the Earth. I want my body gently cared for at home. I want to go to the flame and heat and turn to dust and ash.
My head: a jumble of wires.
Sparks. Arcs. Crackling.
Wires and plugs
Electric and fire.
Fire.
So much fire.
The fuse pops.
The lights go out,
And the world burns down.
I don't want any of this. I didn't ask for it. It wasn't an unanswered prayer. I never asked for any of this. None of it was my idea.
We are born. We age. We die.
All of us.
Every single one of us.
Mom. Dad.
Brother. Sister.
Son. Daughter.
Husband. Wife.
We all will die.
I believe we can hold that idea in our heads without absolute horror. I believe we can hold on to those memories and turn them in our hands, feeling first the joy and then the sorrow as we retread the steps we took together. You were my friend, and now you are gone. Someday, I will be gone, too. That's just the nature of things. It wasn't my idea. I didn't set this up. It was this way when I got here.
"I talk to God, but the sky is empty." • Sylvia Plath
I don't know how to have faith in anything I can't see, can't feel, can't hold in my hands. I have never been able to believe in that sort of thing. Not really.
I tried. I ached for Him. I wanted to feel Him communing with my Spirit. I wanted to be anointed.
There is no God. Just ritual and tradition and dogma and damnation.
Well. Maybe there's something. I'm not certain.
But if there is something, you won't find Him in a Church. Or a synagogue. Or a temple. Or a mosque. No, He doesn't live in those places.
If there is a God, that's not where to find Him.
No.
Have you ever been standing deep in a coniferous forest as the sun begins to set, with dappled sunlight all around, and the wind rustles through the branches, and you feel for a moment like you are just the tiniest cog in the most unimaginably massive machine?
That's God.
I stood and watched the birth of each of my children. They came out, all sticky and bloody and blue. They screamed.
And I saw God.
That's my God. I don't find him in churches. I don't need some wine and a cracker. I don't need chants and hymns. I don't require smoke or bells. I meet with my God without intercessor.
"That God does not exist, I cannot deny. That my whole being cries out for God I cannot forget." • Jean-Paul Sartre
Death is tragic. Soul crushing. World ending. But it doesn't need to be so clean, white and sterile. No need for all this bleach. It shouldn't be this sanitized.
No.
Let me get my hands dirty as I wash and cleanse and dress your body. Let me smell the perfume of decay as mourners visit what was OUR home, and now is only mine. Let your body remain here, with me, until the fire is ready. Until you turn to ashes and dust. Let me cradle your body in my arms as I crumble into despair and darkness. Let me mourn and grieve with your now still hand in my own hand, eternally twitching. Let me push back your hair and kiss your forehead one last time.
I don't want white coats and gloves. I don't want it to smell like disinfectant and cold steel. I don't want to be numbed as I succumb to whatever disease or ailment is my demise. I want to be at home. With you. I want to feel every moment at the end. I don't want to be numbed. Don't let them numb me. Don't let them put me to sleep.
"The reality is that you will grieve forever. You will not ‘get over’ the loss of a loved one; you will learn to live with it. You will heal and you will rebuild yourself around the loss you have suffered. You will be whole again but you will never be the same. Nor should you be the same, nor would you want to” • Elisabeth Kubler Ross
I don't know what the point of all my rambling is. I don't know if I have a point.
Sometimes these words just come tumbling out of my broken brain and I need to send them out to you.
I love you, and I can't imagine a life without you.
But.
If I have to live without you, I want it to be on my terms. Fuck the cold, white cleanliness.
Give me frankincense and myrrh. Give me a bowl and a soft cloth, so I can clean you up myself. Watch me struggle to undress and dress your limp form. Watch me fold your arms across your chest as they prepare your body for the flames. The black smoke rises up the chimney. You are ashes now.
Ashes and dust.
You get the kerosene,
I'll get the matches
Let's set ourselves on fire tonight
There'll be nothing left but ashes
••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Further reading:
Comments
Post a Comment