Rituals of the Dead

Trigger warning: mentions of suicide, substance abuse and death

I was reminded today of one of my core beliefs. Sharing our stories matters. A dear friend wrote me a note, which contained some vulnerable self-reflection, and I related to what she shared. For a moment, her words closed the loop on my own feelings of loneliness. I was not alone in my suffering, I was not alone in the coldness of life, I was not alone.

It’s been awhile since I’ve shared about my life, since I’ve created art, since I’ve sent words out into the universe. And I have suffered for this, because I need to share, I need to listen, I need to create, I need to feel less alone. And you need this too, and we need this, and the world needs this.

I don’t want to write about these deaths because these are not my dead. These are friends of friends, a long lost relative, celebrities, people from childhood. But there have been so many, and each death announcement so painful that I can’t help but believe in collective grief.

The stories of these people’s lives and deaths are not mine to tell. But these retellings of violent suicide, murder, intense substance abuse related suffering, and family members having to end life support, gnaw at the edges of my own experience in such a way that I wonder if I was blind to such pain until now. Haven’t people always died? Or haven’t I noticed? Death, of course, is part of life. But is life a part of death?

And if it were, what would that mean for the living? I take no comfort in considering that perhaps they made their way to heaven, or maybe they were re-incarnated as a carefree Lilly of the Valley. They suffered here on Earth, their pain was real and it still breaths and it still spreads to us all.

We can heal, I know this, have experienced this. We can hope and our prayers can absolutely be answered. But it still doesn’t change the suffering.

And what will I choose to do with this pain today? I can’t choose joy everyday, I can’t even choose neutrality. With my free will, I’ll put one step in front of the other, open my eyes and vow to take this life as it is. Not as I wish it to be. Not as it should be. Not as a burning ember of love or the smoking ash of hate. But as life, cold as it is, breathing the air floating in front of a mouth ready to drink or spit or scream. We breathe because we do, we love because we do, we die because we do.

Who am I to walk this Earth

with change in my wallet and freshly washed clothes

on a Monday, eyes uplifted, fingers pressed to the pulse

tapping out poems and thinking this will be anything

but self-indulgence

I’ll pray for you

pray to who. My God is here, is real, is suffering right along with the opened veins of the world

if you ever walk with me, you’ll know it’s only by

the Grace of God

that I was ever here at all

her ashes swirl out past the ocean

now watching instead of living

and one day I will too

a puddle of blood is one thing but a wrinkled soul is another

Who am I to walk here

Crossing into your pain

maybe we can carry it and maybe we can’t

try or die

I’ll walk here until I don’t