I saw them then. At the farthest corner where it was darkest. The sisters crouched together in each other’s arms. I saw their faces that were pale but smeared with something—dirt? blood? and I saw they were crying and they saw me, for a long time we looked at each other. “I’m an alive girl,” I whispered. “I’m an alive girl not like you.
I have been in a morbid state of mind since the spring. March, maybe, but definitely April.
At my day job, for instance, I discuss mutilated corpses and the best way to display them, the realistic way to portray a decapitation, or zombie women and their impossibly healthy-looking breasts (all of which is actually related to my work tasks, believe it or not, but I’m not at liberty to discuss specifics.)
And then there’s this. The writing. Every story I have in progress at the moment (for who can commit to just one?) includes death or disease in some way. Some are humorous, some are serious business, some focus on it and in others death is only a minor snag in a character’s path. There are ghosts, wastelands, churches, hospitals, accidents, murders… It’s a surprising list. I never would have guessed that I’d be writing such things, but then I never would have guessed that I’d be writing anything at all.
It’s occurred to me that perhaps I am trying to come to terms with the finite nature of life. I have witnessed and understand birth and creation (as far as a childless man can understand such things), and life as a struggle is ongoing. But death, now that’s something else, something I don’t know. I have never lost anyone close to me to death. They’ll tell me that’s good, appreciate the people in my life while they are here, and I’m trying by God, but what must it be like? To witness it, to experience it? No one wants to think about it because it’s generally a conversation killer, thus using my work as an outlet. Would it be better to contain it, keep it all to myself?
I’ve attended one funeral. I was seven and it was for my aunt’s child who passed away days after birth. The Father talked about things and my aunt cried while my brothers and I played near some headstones. The sky was appropriately gray. The slick and professionally tended grass was fun to run around on. The tiny white casket was adorned in flowers.
I know I’m going to lose someone, and not in the way that we all lose someone who we would like to believe is still out in the world somewhere. It’s going to be someone that I can never speak to again. Someone whose existence has ceased. I understand the inevitability of it. I might be the one to go, who knows? But I wonder what I’d think. I wonder if I’d allow myself to cry.
Can you imagine it, talking to the dead? What would you say? What could you possibly have to say?