Death

More than two and a half years ago, my aunt died.  I've never delved into her death, because I'm too scared to know the reason.  They found her on the stairs in her house, a bruise blossoming on her corpse's cheek.  I'll never bake apple pie with her again.  A little over two years ago a friend of mine died.  A thousand miles away, the car she was in was rolled.  She flew out, and died on impact.  Her cousin identified her at a morgue.  I'll never see her bright eyes or naturally tanned skin again.  A little less than a year ago, my brother's best friend died.  His unhappiness with his life caused him to string himself up by a rope.  His brother found his empty shell.  I'll never hear stories about him ever again.

 

My aunt was the oldest daughter in her family, and left behind a husband she'd married a bare six months before.  Sasha was the youngest cousin in her family, and left behind a non-caring abusive mother and father, and a cousin, aunt, and uncle who raised her.  My brother's friend left behind his status as a 'legend' at my school.

 

What is death?  The loss of life, but what more?  Why must they leave, why must they vanish from the existance I experiance now?  Is my aunt now living as a elephant in Africa?  Does my beloved friend Sasha now look out of the water as a fish?  Does my brother's friend now seek flowers as a bee?  Or is there truly a heaven?  Can they see me crying for them? 

 

I need my aunt here, because without her I can see my mother falling into depression.

I need Sasha here, because without her I no longer have anyone who cares.

I need my brother's friend here, because until his death, I had never seen my brother cry.

 

If I close my eyes, and focus soley on my mind, is that sort of like what I will experiance when my shell grows weary or when my life is thrown out of a withered corpse?  Will I merely exist, a floating membrane above the celestial sphere?  I need to know what comes next, if it's better than all of this!  I need to know if the love I have now - for friends, for family - will exist beyond the grave.  If it won't, how can I feel content with an eternity of sadness and loneliness eating at my bones, until they are nothing more than powder?

 

But truly, what am I, with my eyes closed?  The nucleus of my being is the common thought I am me, but what is beyond that?  I am late nights on the boat, summers on horseback.  I am ink-stained fingers from new books.  I am an electric blanket in winter, piles of school work on the bed.  I am a dark green dress, and a dark purple the year after.  I am the sound of a cello bow drawn across the strings.  I am the letters my great-grandfather sent to my great-grandmother, preserved in an envelope and hidden behind books.  I am magnetic words for poetry.  I am poetry. 

 

There's a million things I am, some of which I will never experiance again without a physical body to aid me.  Will I lose all that when I die?  Or are the non-Christians out there right?  I want, so badly, to believe that I will be reborn as a human, that I will get a second chance at this life that I have already messed up.  There's no promise for that, though.  No promise of something beyond the grave, of something beyond the light, beyond the shadows of darkness and shrouds of death.

 

This qualifies as neither a story, nor a mock-journal entry.  Perhaps it simply qualifies to stand on its own, a testimony to the confusion that a teenage girl can find pent up in her lonesome heart.  This is my tribute to death.