This is my first time dealing with death.
I knew it was inevitable but in the deepest part of me, I still hoped… Hoped that he will recover and hoped that everything will go back to the way they used to be. I’ve encountered death in movies, dramas, and novels and in those things I felt pain, second-hand, for the fictional characters. I’ve also read that no death is easy, meaning even if you anticipated it, even if you expected it, once it arrives, you will have no barrier against it. Your emotions are in turmoil and your thoughts are in disarray. You cannot barricade your heart from the truth for once it hits, you will realize that this is it. This is where it ends. Truth and reality are no longer separate. Truth and reality becomes one and no matter where you look, no matter what you want to believe, death has arrived and it has taken a piece of your heart.
No one knows what goes beyond death. People around me say, “He’s in a better place now.” How do we know? Is it easy to believe in what we want to hear and in what we want to be true? What if after the last breath has been drawn, he ceases to exist? That no matter how endless the sky is, no matter how vast the known universe is, once the eyes have glossed over, he, and everything that made him what he was, ceases to exist. He is wiped from existence.
There is comfort in that for even though he longer exists, that can also mean that the pain he felt has long since been erased as well.
When death has come – has taken a piece from you that you will never be able to get back, it seizes you and then it releases you – as if wanting you to seek and hold comfort and peace for a moment of reprieve. And once you’ve held on those things, death seizes you again but this time, his grip has become tighter. His hold has become suffocating – strangling you and squeezing the life, comfort, and peace you are barely holding on to… slowly telling you that all those are just illusions. Illusions given to make you last through the day.
Death’s arrival and departure is quick but heartrending and what it leaves behind in its wake, stays.
At this very moment – 7:08 PM, 7th of April 2018 – death has gone but with it is a piece of my heart dripping blood all over its wake.
To my dog, Kija, if they are right and there truly is Heaven, play, eat, sleep, and be happy. If they aren’t and there is nothing beyond the physical world, you still exist – in my heart and in my memory and in those of the people who loved you.
To my Kija, wherever you are, I loved you and I will always will.
Goodbye.
Farewell.
