Death is weird and empathy is a curse.
The news of the death of a person that you know and love hits different. First, you ask a stupid question like — is it the person in my house?– out of shock. Then your chest becomes tight and you start to weep uncontrollably. Loud and heavy sobs. Loud because you are in pain, heavy because you feel guilty. You wish you could have been there, you know. Not necessarily at the scene of the death, oh god no. I mean you wish you could have said more to, done more for and experienced more with the person. You wish you had gathered the courage to ask all the questions you had been meaning to ask because you wanted to know more about the person-that-was. You wish you had not spent most of your last time with them averting your gaze because the way they stared at you in silence made you a bit uncomfortable, so uncomfortable that it made you greet them more than necessary.
Unexpected deaths can be devastating. One minute, the person is laughing and the next minute, the person is gone. The person has stopped laughing and will never laugh again. The person cannot tease you about not knowing how to speak your native language. The person cannot insist you come into the house and shut all the doors. The person cannot ask for biscuits. The person cannot watch the Africa Magic Epic channel. All because the person is gone. You are repetitively told as consolation that the person is in a better place, the person lived a long life and the person left well but the consolation does little because your focus has now shifted from the person-that-was to the people-that-are and how these people are coping with the shocking reality of having someone so abruptly uprooted from their everyday lives.
Sometimes you do not know how much you love someone until the person is in pain and your chest literally hurts because they are hurting and you are crying because of how helpless they feel and you are angry at the god they believe in because of the time the bad thing called death decided to make a quick subtraction. So you are dealing with your own hurt and thinking of the hurt of others who have just lost a parent and a ward they were attached to. You are stuck wondering if they can eat or if they can sleep because your own appetite rarely leaves but your sleep is disturbed. You are stuck wondering if they have been staring into space like you have. You are stuck wondering if they have been bursting into tears sporadically like you have. Tough times that supposedly never last seem to be lasting. At least the person-that-was was tough.
Was. So this is really how the person is going to be spoken about in past tense forever? That’s crazy.
