Sound of Sorrow

My cousin, Scott Stanley, died a year ago on Thursday. He was the father of five young and wonderful children and a husband to a very strong, fun wife.

````As they build from the everlasting walls surrounding us, they entrap us. They create in themselves a new feeling of grotesque power that if not extinguished could forever swallow us whole. Perhaps these feelings are for the better and if we didn’t have them, then it wouldn’t be real. Perhaps if we held these feelings in then one day we would no longer be able to survive and the feelings would overpower us into a never-ending oblivion.

     I stand back starring at the large blue and black soggy crew that is my family and I am bewildered. I don’t understand how this is possible or why he left. For a split second these people don’t seem like my family at all, just a large group of very sad people that I want to help but I can’t. It’s like reaching for something over your head. You know if you could just stretch a little further then your finger tips could reach it and then perhaps you could have the thing that you want but you know you can’t stretch any further and you will not be allowed to have that thing that you are so longing for. That reality can either make you give up or make you reach higher which only further extends your desperation.

     We are all reaching franticly trying to find this thing that we all want back so badly but there is nothing that we can do to get it. Nothing. When that reality hits it is the worst because it is something that makes us incapable of stopping a feeling no one wants to feel. That means we are helpless. Have you ever felt helplessness? It is an uncontrollable feeling of not being able to do anything no matter what lengths you try. You will never succeed and that thought, though depressing, is a great reality.

      Each person slowly found that reality on their own. Some disappeared for days at a time until they finally realized that there was no point. Life was going to go on even if we didn’t want it to. Some laughed it off as if nothing happened because if they cry, it’s real and if it’s real, he’s gone. Others cry at the mere existence of his name spoken. Some are happy in front of people and then break when alone. Any of these options are no good because none of them give us him.

     These emotions. These perilous and pointless emotions take us over and control our moves, our thoughts, and our actions. Sometimes these things, these ever so powerful feelings, make us better because they make us more real then we have ever been. Perhaps they in fact create our very being and if we didn’t have them then we wouldn’t be us. We would be someone else or we wouldn’t be anything entirely. Feelings are what makes up a person, good and bad.

     I am the kind of person that doesn’t think I have the right to feel true sadness about something that was never mine to begin with. But I am wrong. Everyone is allowed to feel whatever they want and it’s not only okay but it is welcomed and many greet it with open arms. Touch is something that is uncomfortable when trying to be consoled. I want to feel the anger rush through my veins until it beats in my chest and I can no longer control myself. That anger cannot be consoled or comforted. It can only be fueled. But that isn’t supposed to happen here.

      I can count the number of times I have been in a church with one hand. The reasons I go are not for worshiping a god that I may or may not believe in. The reasons that I go are for these people that I am surrounded by now. I went for great things like a marriage where I saw a beautiful young girl draped in a long white gown marry into our family. They said meaningless words in phrases together that I will never understand. They sang songs about “their savior” and kept repeating a name that is familiar to me yet not in the same way that is familiar to them.

      These people, these loving people who I care for so deeply are in various forms of mind states. One is the most surprising because I forgot he was capable of any other emotion other then anger or fun sarcasm. Apparently he is also capable of sadness towards someone we all love. The phrase “You don’t know how important something is until it’s gone,” deems true today. I didn’t realize how much I would miss the small conversations or the laughter that this lost one and I shared. I didn’t know that even his presence would be missed. The very aura of someone not being around is indescribably difficult to perceive.

      When the words begin to spur out again I know that I will not understand them. The people around me are so affected by these words that they hang onto them and keep them like they are a piece of him somehow. This process is supposed to give them closer like somehow speaking random words in an order that I don’t grasp and talking about him in a facetious way that makes everyone sad is going to close out this case. He will never be closed to me. This chapter will never end. It doesn’t make me feel better to see his body cold like stone laying lifeless in a box. So I don’t look. It makes me feel like everything that we once had is gone and now all we have is this end right here. I don’t want to feel that way.

      Churches are a funny thing really because some people are apposed and some people are for them so much so that they dedicate themselves to going every Sunday. I am not apposed nor for these buildings with strange structure. When I see one I just see a building for weddings and funerals. It is a building where a new life begins and another ends. The building like this crying family is just another witness to another ugly tragedy or another white gown.

      When the speaking is finally over and the coffin is being taken out, we all stand. I am last to join the long line of a grieving family. With a baby on my hip, I walk behind them watching the people with faces that I have never seen before as they too grieve for this person that I loved. By the end of this story you too will be among their sorrow faces. Their faces that scream for the loss or the pain that comes deeply embedded in the heart of your soul as this person leaves the earth. And somewhere in your mind you are sure that you are going to leave with them because there is no other way that you can go on and then suddenly you look in the face of that baby sitting on your hip and you realize you have to. You have to move on because they will be looking to you for kindness. They will be looking to you desperately hoping that you can tell them how to move on when in fact you, yourself aren’t sure yet either.

      Once out of the church, I see the white light bright in my eyes that disorients me for a second. It is Fall, but the sun is blazing. We are sweating while wearing these dark clothes. Somehow beneath everything that has happened, the heat on this decrepit day will be remembered in a part of our brain that we don’t like to access. The sun protrudes from the sky as if to remind us that just because another life form has left this earth does not mean that the weather will suddenly stop or change just for that purpose. It will continue to be the same thing that it was always meant to be.

     Nothing will change for the people around us as we walk in the grocery store but everything will change for this family. Of course there are many questions to this unkindly act. Most of them are confusing so I try not to think about them knowing that I will never get a straight answer. Those people in that building back there have an answer but I just can’t bring myself to believe in it all the way. Why do people die? Why do people leave us in such tragic ways that we will never truly understand? Why?

      There is never a straight answer. The answer is actually so complicated that it is beyond the capacity of our brains, so instead I will just give you the simple response. Because all good things must come to an end. His life, just as ours, will one day come to an end and that is what I realize as I stand here in the blazing sun watching the people sweat and cry over a large box as it is lowered into the ground.

      Maybe it doesn’t matter. Since one day we will all die maybe it doesn’t matter if it is tragic or peaceful. Young or old. It shouldn’t. But it does. It does and I don’t have answers for why, but I have to keep going because that is what everyone is telling me I have to do. Why should I listen to them? They say it’s what he would have wanted, but they don’t know what he would have wanted, they aren’t him. No one is him anymore because the only person that was him is gone. Now we are forced to pretend like we know what he would want. And we try so hard to figure it out and maybe we do but we will never know for sure.

       By the end of this terrible day I am still shaking with the feeling of anger towards whatever “being” decided it was okay to take this person away from his family. This is why no matter what I will always see those buildings as a place where words I don’t understand are spoken, where new lives begin as others end. I have heard the phrase “I’m sorry,” so many times it no longer carries it’s meaning. And now I am floating in an everlasting oblivion that is a blue sky of anger and thick emotion. It entraps me holding me here and never letting go.

       Now, I too, am just another witness to another tragedy. Another face in the crowd. Another sound of sorrow.

Author's Note

This was written after I had gone to my cousin's funeral. I can remember every detail of that day, every feeling and every sight as if it is happening now in front of me.