Particular Moments

A little over two days ago, Zoey passed away.

I am not sure if I can write anything conclusive of this; contrary to many other, simpler instances in life, when a loved one is no longer, when he or she departs from the realm of the living, it is too much for the conscious living to fully grasp the black-and-whiteness of it.

In fact, it’s easier to not think nor feel anything at all. Rationalize the Death with the simplest  resolve: it is not my affair. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe a year from now. But not now.

At present, I am the living and I must fulfill the role of staying functional—and not let the overwhelming sentiments of it rule. Does this sound cold-blooded, mechanical, perhaps even cruel?

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“How are you dealing with it? Are you okay?” Benjamin asks, tentatively, as if he were not careful, I could have actually shed a tear in front of him.

“Heh, um…there’s really nothing to deal with. I’m good.”

Ben looked into my eye, searching for pretense, the subtle hints of weakness behind the glances of those who desperately spread veils over their pain and sorrow. I stare back into and past his studying, cautious, yet uncertain gaze, and exuded my determined response to his unsaid question,

“Are you REALLY not sad about this?”

With my eyes I said, “No, my friend, I am not.”

He looked puzzled, then slightly disappointed—as if by failing to display the expected emotions, I therefore lacked certain aspects of humanity, and that he couldn’t believe or understand why I could be so stone-cold, by his standards.

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Benjamin is a rare and very close friend, yet back in that moment, as we looked into each other’s eyes, I couldn’t help but to have let anger brew:

Fucking people. Always expecting the convention, the happy and the sad of the fairy tales. Won’t you just awake yourselves to the fact that outwardly nothing indicates the MOST of one’s sentiments? That they could run so deep so as to escape the shallow face? 

To each his own. Who am I to say.

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The most definitely inadequate form of grief is to think of another’s decease as one’s own loss. How selfish is it, to feel sad because you have lost someone? YOU having lost another? It is not about you, dear; you weren’t the one who had to formally greet Death for the first and last time, regardless of whether it was to your desire. The complete bereavement of physical free will, once for all.

Zoey has left this linear plane of existence, and with her departure, she also parted ways with all the privileges within it—the ability to touch, to see, and to feel: the blue sky, or when it’s gray; the sun, fields of green, the pain, the sadness, the reality checks, the confinement, the pleasure of sleep and waking up again, the promises of tomorrow, etc…the whole luxury package that is life.

I do not feel sad for myself that she’s gone. It’s unfortunate that she couldn’t enjoy her former ways of living any longer. As such, I try to imagine what is like, and I try to empathize with her. But how could I possibly even begin to do so? I cannot imagine the unknown.

Keep her in my thoughts, and she lives on, in continuity; in memory—across all points of her once unidirectional existence.