I thought I was well acquainted enough with death to handle that. Or maybe I just thought I was disconnected enough with the death itself.
"Parting is all we know of heaven and all we need of hell." I'm no Emily Dickinson, no Belle of Amherst, and I ain't Sylvia Plath, either, with her Death & Co. I'm following a legacy of death-chasing lady poets, and I can't even handle one funeral.
There was this metaphysical crisis, even: People can get up and talk so much about lives lived, and they're okay because they know about the afterlife, but even if there is an afterlife, the lives were already lived and now they're gone and dead, no matter what comes next.
And I'll tell you what comes next: I do. We do. Me and you. Us. We're next to be waxy and lowered into the ground, and that's sad, and I'm scared, and I hate myself for writing this sentence, because it takes every emotion out of death, especially this death, and I feel bad for doing that, because I truly loved him. I love him. And now he's gone and that's a void that cannot be filled for so many people. We, as individuals, fill more voids than we know, and bandages aren't made for the wounds left when we leave. Even in Sunday School they say that it's okay to cry, even when you know all about Heaven and Jesus, but I'd cry even if they told me it wasn't.
I feel like Avery when she says, "Open up to the book of St. Avery, verse one, and you will find one word: Blasphemy."
Yes, loves. Open up to the book of St. Addy, verse one, and you will see that it does not exist, because she wasn't exactly a saint by any means, the poor dear; bless her heart.
If it means a lot to you.
P.S. I'm still mad.
All my love,
Addy
