One summer, when I was little, there were wildfires spreading across the mountains and through some unfortunate towns. I remember being very afraid watching them on the news. How they would burn through trees like it was nothing. I remember going to your house with my mom and hearing you talk about it and how you worried you'd soon have to evacuate.
You never did.
And now that you are gone, I imagine those wildfires spreading through your bones and your tissues. I imagine the slow burning ember growing into this uncontrollable force of nature. I saw it ignite your life and reduce it to ashes and I imagine that's how the trees felt. I know that you must have been very afraid, but you never said a word.
In the end, you threw your arms up and cried out for air. You whimpered like a child, throwing your arms up, over and over, trying to expand your chest so you could breathe. It was like watching somebody drown without any water.
Everyone is very upset now. And though the last time I saw you, you were not you at all and I saw your final breath leave your lungs, I still feel you here around me. And I wish that I could see you again, but I know that I can't. I guess the same way that some people never live, some people never really die.
We're trying to clean up what's left behind and it's far from okay. Papa's in the hospital, Casey's living with some other family. Now your home is just a house filled with you. We're trying to take you out of it and I am amazed at how easily we can pack you up into boxes and ******* garbage bags but you are still there, everywhere.
I don't believe that ghosts haunt houses or graveyards. I don't believe that after we die, our consciousness clings to the places we spent most of our time and our favourite shirts, I don't believe that our anger and unresolved stories haunt the halls of abandoned hospitals and amusement parks. I believe that ghosts live inside of us and the things that haunt us are not them but ourselves. I believe that exorcisms and séances exist only for the living.
I do not believe that you are smiling down on me.
I guess, looking at death in an abstract way, holding on is a much kinder consolation than letting go; trying to be okay with someone being here and gone before you can even say goodbye. It's hard not to get sentimental when it's someone you love. So as much as I'd like to believe that what I'm feeling is really you, I know it's only me and your ghost is nothing but a memory.
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One year has passed and I am full of joy, I am jubilant, and I rejoice to the sky because I knew you, because I heard your sing-song voice greeting us from your kitchen, because I shared 16 years of memories with you and that is a gift I cannot afford to forget. I am celebrating now because your pain is over, I am crying out for joy because you no longer have to be stoic, you no longer have to fight back tears, no more forcing words out through clenched teeth, I am so happy, you do not have to stand bravely in the face of insurmountable fear. I am so relieved for you, I am absolutely giddy that your suffering is over and you're out there somewhere with Papa and you can dance the night away like teenagers again but there is no relief for the selfish mourners still trying to fill the space you once occupied.
I'm trying hard to remember you fondly and not get too caught up in the pain of letting go but some nights, I pray to an afterlife that I have no faith in. I pray in vain that somewhere you are listening and you can hear me saying I am sorry.
I am sorry.
I am sorry.
I'm sorry that I was too young to understand. I wish I had visited a little more and avoided you a lot less. I wish I had taken the time to get to know you then and I wish I didn't know so much now. I wish I had told you I loved you and I wish I hadn't avoided hugging you goodbye on Christmas evening after dinner, when our family parted ways again and we all knew we wouldn't meet again for months. I wish I'd done something before it was too late.
But it's too late.
And now, a year later, I think of you daily. I still sleep with the teddy bear I gave you the first time I saw you in the hospital. My home is littered with bits and pieces of you- your recipe box in my kitchen cabinet, two needlepoint children you hand-stitched hung up on the wall, your sewing kit in the box where I keep my scrap fabrics, and your old trucking jacket with a clean tissue in the left pocket that I refuse to throw out. You didn't live long enough to visit in person, but, still, I find comfort in believing a part of you still lingers here alongside me; woven into my life so seamlessly it almost makes it bearable to know that you never met this version of me.
Maybe it's better that way. I don't know. And besides, it's too late anyway. I am over-the-moon. I am so happy for you.
i wrote pt. 1 in spring 2014 in an attempt to process the death of my grandmother; pt. 2 came a year later, still processing, still holding on. at the age of 16, it was the most personal contact i'd ever had with death- it was new, so i wrote it all down. now, i've gotten closer and closer to death and i read this and it still resonates. i wondered then at what point the processing would be over but i know now that it doesn't.
