the worst part wasn't the students walking around school, faces macabre with white paint, or the in class plays or the fake-sounding myspace-profile obituaries. that didn't sink in. no, the worst part was the parents. voices breaking, pure grief. that wasn't simulated, that was real, and the whole audience felt it. suddenly i felt like i understood parental worrying, understood the incredible ties when you give part of yourself to someone. i thought about what john muir said about nature, about how if you pull on any one thing you find it is connected to the rest of the universe, and malina and i grabbed sweaty hands and wiped off our tears with my jacket. "remember that dying is selfish," said the dad of the kid who almost died, who had to tell his kid his best friend was gone forever.
i went to the library today, huddled in my favorite corner studying for some test, and my dad called saying he was going to walk me home, and i got almost hysterical after i hung up. imagining all the ways to be dead. we hurl ourselves into these stupid hunks of metal and forget that we aren't machines. then he walked in and i breathed and remembered none of it had happened.
i never want to go to a funeral. forget congruence. forget endings. all of us are the biologically immortal jellyfish, who grow up just enough to be infants again.
I like the ending of this the best. I was troubled by the "Every 15 Minutes" thing too, though I pretended to shrug it off easily. I often have nightmares about being the one in the casket, either because of a car accident or some other horrible thing, or worse, being the one reading the eulogy. I don't think I would be able to put my friends and family through a funeral service, and I certainly couldn't be the one attending it.
ReplyDeleteI hate having to be concerned with this stuff, but it's a real fear, and one that I stay up at night thinking about.