On Death

     I have been searching for ways to cope with a grief that I do not even feel I deserve to experience. How is that? I am afraid to truly express myself on this public platform. A platform where all eyes can see. Where all minds can process. Where all judgements can be made--in private or public. Yet, I think that this must be done. 

     I tried to write poems to express myself. They have been hard to come by lately. I have tried to train myself to be numb to death. I have been told by numerous others, perhaps more experienced than I, that death is not something people get used to. That trying to numb myself is a nearly impossible task. Yet, I wanted to try anyway. I have long held the belief that the ones who suffer the most from death are those left behind. I truly believe this.

     Although I am aware of the pain death leaves in its wake, I try to romanticize it. I tell myself that the dead do not suffer. They have no worries. Then I wonder, why does it hurt when someone loses a loved one? Why do I hurt when I hear of someone else's loss. I try to use annoyance and anger to shield myself. To numb myself. But that is merely denial. When death hits close to home, it still hurts. When it exposes itself like an exhibitionist, all I can do is gape in amazement. No matter how experienced I think I become, death never ceases to surprise me. 

     I am writing this post because I learned news that a loved one died. A relative. Someone dear to me whom I did not feel I spent enough time of with during my adult life. This was the third person since this calendar year started. There were others, one I knew in passing another I did not know at all, but whose loss still had a personal impact on me. So, I began counting. I named 2021 the "year of death". Though, I suppose, for the rest of the world the death count began the year before. Even prior to the recent pandemic, there was a global death count. Someone has always been counting. 

     For those who are experiencing grief as they read this, I do not have any pure words of consolation. The only consolation I believe there is, is the truth that the person who died, once lived. Another consolation I can give, is to embrace the love and life shared with the one who has died. Because that is the truth we living ones have. The truth of life is that we are here. We can love. We can laugh. We experience an array of emotions. The truth is that all of these experiences are real. They are parts of us. They are the parts that the ones who have gone before us have left behind, the parts we will leave behind one day. 

    Indeed, death is a fact of life. One of the hardest facts I have yet to understand. Everything that has once lived, has eventually died. I have learned that knowing this fact, acknowledging this fact, does not make grief any less real. It certainly has not made it easier. If anything, knowing this fact has mainly led me to writing this blog post. I suppose this is the greatest epiphany I have had about death.