I’ve been thinking about death a lot lately. The fragility of life. And not in a figurative or beautifully tragic way, not in the way it fuels life, but in the way it torments it. The way everyone talks louder at the dinner table to cover the missing voice. The way we always promise to learn from it, their life— our lesson, “look here!” how we have been spared, how lucky we are to be living. How lucky we are indeed. Yet, death is deafening. Absence is suffocating. And the living are left to grieve. So often death is a thief. Yet, I resist and resent the temptation to fear it. For is that not another way, it steals our time alive? Fear of one’s death like a drawn out demise. I know now, I see, it is the living who suffer the most.

I’ve been thinking about those who’ve lost someone. And how things will never be the same, and how nicely worded obituaries leave only the margins for our pain. We are so bad at finding the words. No one knows how to talk about death. How to articulate loss. It allows for a distance. Like death is something at the end, never the middle, god forbid the beginning— but I know this to be wrong. Untrue, a falsity, protection. I was lied to. People die, and they die too soon. And what do I say when they die too soon because we hadn’t reached their ending but death is for the end that’s what you said isn’t it?

If you’ve lost someone, do you try to fall asleep but instead press your cheek into your pillow, looking for them? I do. Do you wonder where to look? How to look? I have never been afraid of dying, only of the people I love dying, because it is the living who suffer the most. 

It was almost summer, not quite warm enough, but the time of year when winter’s frost still lingers under clothes, when even the slightest warmth on your cheeks tastes like August. We were the last people in the Wendy’s, for no particular reason. My dad always insists on eating his meal while it’s hot. It was the time of night where the streetlights in the parking lot look lonely, and I wonder if they’re cold. We’re done eating and I’m thinking about my grandpa, dad says we can eternalize those we’ve lost by following their advice, making an effort. As if to pump their habits chests with air, by following their hand. He always mows the lawn the way his friend liked it. A conduit for life. An extension of the dead. There is nothing that can bring them back. I want to cry, but do my tears help? Maybe. At least if I cry too, we can cry together. Do angels cry?

And I think that I’m angry that whispers of an afterlife remind me of when I was learning to rollerblade but my mom insisted I wear knee pads. Maybe we're too hard on ourselves, maybe love is second but suffering is first, or is it easier to be brave than to do the reverse? To dilute grief without reservation, it is not ignorance or weakness, but simply human nature. No matter our precautions, it is the living who suffer the most. And we all bare our eventual truths. So maybe some white lies are the same colour as the clouds, and the sky is vast, and I hold you till forever knowing nothing lasts. If you were to dangle your feet, knowing clouds are only air, when you fell you wouldn’t be wondering if you’re going anywhere. Wrap fears in promises, wrap them in love, wrap them in memories, wrap death in life. Wrap it round and round and round. Hold it to your chest, where your heart is beating. Ba boom ba boom ba boom. How lucky we are indeed.