About Death

Death is strange.

It is an ending and a beginning.

It is the moment you discover who someone’s real friends were when they were alive and who will be around now that they are gone.

How well they knew the now dearly departed.

What they thought of them and what kind of an impression they made on them and the world.

It is interesting to discover that the only person who truly knows you is yourself.

If you go to just one or two funerals, you will learn something new about that close friend or relative you just lost.

It’s not that these “new” things were a secret. There are so many moments in a person’s life that it is impossible to share every one.

Stories we forget to tell or don’t tell because it’s nice to keep some things to ourselves. That is not what is strange, though.

The strange part is how their belongings get disposed of in the end. All these things that have been with them for who knows how long?

I know they are just things, but these things helped represent the life the now-deceased person lived. 

These things helped us to know who they were in this life. Their style and tastes. The physical representation of who they were. I know not all of the objects we store in our homes are precious or meaningful to us, but many are and hold memories.

It begins to sink in (for me, anyway) the moment you start dividing up, selling, or trashing someone’s personal belongings because they have died. 

That is the moment when shit gets real.

At this exact moment, you must acknowledge that they have left for good and moved on to some unknown place.

They are no longer with you, permanently.

It is a weird and complex feeling.

No one wants to go through this process. It is this weird yet necessary disassembling and dismantling of someone’s life. 

Then you have to go on without them. 

And the cycle repeats.