i don’t believe in death,

       mom died when i was 13, dumm died a few years ago, but honestly, i gotta conclude that death just doesn’t make sense. i didn’t cry, at first. it didn’t register. they said i could’ve left a letter in the casket, but i had nothing to write at the time. is that a regret, i wonder?

but anyway, broadly speaking, although i understand what death means, in a technical way, i just can’t take it in. if one disappears, i miss them. if one goes far away, abroad, drifting from my path or whatnot, i miss them. what is it that fundamentally separates the absence from the death? i suppose, in a way, you could say it’s the knowledge that they won’t come back.

i watched dao the other day, a film happening partly in guinée-bissau; in the film, they held a ceremony for the father’s death, and they spoke with the dead himself, asked questions, got some closure, had some dialogue, he’s – possessed – to be able to answer. the knowledge that they won’t come back is not that fixed, although the energy sure is different in a way, i could imagine. you could debate.

even then, even with the perspective of not coming back one day in that same usual form, or in no form at all, this is the sort of “knowledge” that doesn’t exactly “matter”. it won’t make any more sense if i “rationalise” it, with rational just being some sort of perspective i don’t care much for in this instance. i still meet mom in my dreams sometimes, and i am myself living with a ghost. so what is it that fundamentally makes death out of reach and different?

but even then, of course, i wouldn’t want my close ones to die, would i? although, i wouldn’t exactly want them to be gone in general for the reason that i want them in my life, to enjoy their presence, and so going back to – what is is that is so different? gone is gone, gone is grief, the grief of death is the kind that might come with an official announcement rather than keeping you wondering, but still, gone and away, away and gone.

is the cruelty of death that it doesn’t let you wonder? is it only when the sight is burnt in, etched in that it gets processed as the end? although it doesn’t stop all sorts of wonderings. although in the casket, they used make up so she still looks as human as possible. asleep but without breathing. i have sleep apnea, though.

if you’re gone, i hope you’ll come back. if you say goodbye as you leave my sight, i trust you’ll come back. is death when i trust you won’t, hope you would? but no matter what i ask, i can’t agree, and i’ve already said so. in the end, i just don’t think death ever exactly gets processed as death. the grief we work through and work with, it might become more bearable, although it still surprises me ten years in, it transforms with life, an alive feeling that isn’t even fully reserved to the case of grieving the dead only.

death, processed otherwise. it might be the absence. it might be the rest. it might be the abandon. it might be quite a lot of things, at once or not, or none of these at all and feel senseless or intimate, or impossible. in a way, i guess death becomes what you process it as rather than its own separate concept.


may 18th – may 26th