Yesterday I viewed a decaying body for the first time. I didn't want to touch his once unstoppable, now fragile body. In my mind I saw the grey chest simply caving in and flooding with dusty driftwood. But that is not the point.

I've been trying desperately to record everything - the funeral mass service, the small family moments during the reception, all of the testimonies of friends and family - but I cannot be everywhere at once, and I am exhausted. I thought the death day was long; then I thought the whole weekend was long; then I thought the week was long. Now I know that every minute will be long for a long time and everything before now was a very short time. And I am so tired.

I can't get the last vivid memories of my uncle out of my mind only 2 and a half years ago. I had just come home after being away for a few years. We were lounging on couches while my grandmother tinkered in the kitchen. We circumlocuted sighs for a while.  He asked me questions while I tried not to answer. "The way you talk about him," he said, "It breaks my heart." Then, out of nowhere, talk of my own love spurred memory of his own "My Mari, my Mari," he bemoaned as though it were only yesterday she left, although it had been 20 years. I'd never heard him sound like this before - so bare. I never felt so close to him.



Now he is dead and there sits Maria in the church pew sobbing. I never thought she'd come - they were both remarried. But here she is. My God, I thought, She still loves him, too, after all. She sits and sits - unable to say anything to him; unable to go back.

Life is short. There is nothing beyond. There is such thing as too late: when we die, which could be at any moment. These are the thoughts with which I am left as I watch the sad parade of mourners in disbelief, reliving every memory in a spectacular orgy of oration. It is futile now. It didn't have to be. It doesn't have to be. For love. But that's not for me to decide. Yesterday I sat sobbing silently stupidly hoping He'd walk through the door. But He never did. I failed and I will take my hell as I have been: willingly. Every single night, where he comes into my dreams and steals us away to our secret silent place to keep us safe from the darkness nearby that tries to pry. Every single morning, where I wake with a jolt and the pain compresses my body so I live the day breathless like a zombie. Just enough alive to feel the torture.

 

"Under the Same Sun" - Ben Howard