Young Writers Society

I attended my funeral that year, the summer sweeping across the open space where they laid my body and I watched. I remember being barefoot, watching from a distance, blinking from the diamond shine of the tears of the people I had taken for granted for so many years. People whose funerals I had attended myself stood around the small cluster of black clad mourners that still held to their pulses and heartbeats, paying their last respects to a form that I no longer inhabited. It was late afternoon, the sun starting to brush the western treetops gently, framed in the orangish glow that began to seep out around us. The grass was cool under my feet, and my hair was long and loose, feeling like a cool fountain down my back as I stood silently like a statue, watching my friends. I can’t say I didn’t weep, watching the people I loved in life hurt caressing the last ribbon of pain that I held onto from my living life, but my tears pulsed with the heartbeats of five, each seated beside each other in the front row.

Telling my story is painful, and even as I speak the names of these people who laid the foundation of a fountain that bore the only happiness and love in my life, my tears fall. Death does not take away the gift of feeling, or the curse of pain, it merely gives the last ray of light to judge your life by, showing you the lost pieces of a situation or person’s point of view. You can never hate in death, because everything’s driving purpose, each action and each inaction and each reaction comes to you in its glory, and all the pieces of all the point of views in every argument and painful word are revealed. This grants the sweet gift of realization, and then, even after the deepest trenches of a dark moment, you can finally give yourself what the whole world craves. Peace with yourself, forgiveness in its entirety, and understanding like no living man could ever know.

The front row, those rented seats heavy with the people I left behind, were the ones I watched. These few were the people that I would lay with for hours at night, when they fell into fitful sleep. Those first few nights I spent with just one, the one who needed it most. I lay in bed beside him, resting a hand on his forehead when he stopped tossing and turning for the briefest of moments, or the long turns of stillness when he stared at the terra cotta ceiling, reliving and anguishing in what had happened. I sat on the edge of the bed beside him, torn deeply in his pain when he chain smoked, his eyes red from the mixture of smoke, tears, drinking, and not sleeping. I cried when he did, and on those first few nights when exhaustion and alcohol dragged him down with them, I lay my body against his like I had in life, tucking my body under his arms and my head against his chest, listening to the heartbeat of the man that I had lost and who had lost me, granting us both a brief moment of unconscious return to the time we both desperately craved. Time together.

Time is always relative, slowing with dullness, speeding by with joy and excitement or anxiety. I didn’t know when time would let me have him back, when I could have those endless rambling conversations again that we always seemed to carry on with, annoying people around us with our secrets and jokes. I wanted him to live, I wanted to watch him love, I wanted him not to hurt. I knew he missed me, I could feel in both of our hearts when he would break, when he would lay in bed and do nothing but stare at the empty space where I would have been just a few weeks ago, knowing as I did that the scent of my shampooed hair lingered on the pillow that lay askew on the grey sheets. He was hurting, unpredictable, and when he finally slept, I pulled the blanket a little tighter, and took the precious moments to sweep my hand through the messy thick brown hair that I loved so much. I would slide a hand into his, tears coming when I watched his body relax in return, his breathing slowing and his mind at piece, even for the briefest moment.

There were nights he spoke to me… Those nights were the hardest, the nights that he blamed himself, the words he spilt out around him thick with self loathing as he apologized over and over for letting me die, for letting me live the last days of my life like I did. I spoke in return, and I knew somewhere he could feel my discontent with how he laid the fault on himself, but it seemed like the only way he could control the wave of anger in him, hot and sick and swooping anger that turned to disgust with God and the world as he stared back into the space where I had lain.

The curse of death was our distance, but the gift was almost a cleansing one. I hated seeing him hurt, and it drove me to pain, and yet, barefoot now and looking at the worn away soul that held my love’s seat in my final rites, I know now that he loved me. There had to be no more question, the light that death gives shining directly on us both and opened my eyes to his struggle to love me not as a painful thing, but as the essence of true love. When one must fight to keep their lover safe, using self sacrifice to protect them, it is called an act of love. The fight that he had waged inside himself when I had reentered his life those few years ago was for my protection, something that I could never have seen then. I see it now, that learning to love one another is the pinnacle of acts of love. It is voluntarily cutting and scarring the heart for the protection and power to keep the other safe and battling the loneliness of life together, staving off the pain that comes through the cutting of the past‘s scars and the new wounds.

He did that. He gave up the comfort of moving on to fight for me. And now I’m fighting for him, as invisibly as I can. I yearn for him, for his daily smile and the wish that he could turn those teal eyes on me and tell me I’m beautiful, so that for a change I could look back at him and smile and speak all the newfound words that I have found for how much I love him. Tell him that if he thinks I am beautiful, then no one in the world could ever convince me otherwise. To touch his cheek with my fingertips and stain my heart with the gorgeous color pouring out of the eyes glittering with his love. My tears are heavy, a thick yet slow rolling trail of wet heat as I watch him some nights, my hand in his and my head on his chest. I can always see the reflection of the clock, and my heart bleeds. Just a few more minutes with him… Just a few more.

When he rises, I lay the last of my nights kisses on the smooth skin, letting him know that I am there, even if he doesn’t acknowledge it. Perhaps it is my pride, but maybe the littlest things will keep him going. For as I wait for his return to me, I want it to be when the world is ready. The sadness of my loss is a poison, and his loss would multiply down to the other four that I visit, a heavy burden on the others that came to pay their respects to a life that I had once thought not worth living. That is death’s gift… I see my lover, and I remember the shining moments of deepest happiness, of having love when so few get the privilege, and I know, that no matter the pain, I will get to taste his kiss again. And until then, I’ll know my life was worth every single sting, hurt, loss, and now trivial pain. Because I found love.

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Please let me know what you all think/errors/suggestions/questions.

~bloodred