Stories, coffee, joy & more

death is such a funny term

"Death is such a funny term." Dean says, a flicker of anger in his voice, a dormant sadness hidden within the strength he pretends to hold close.
"Is it?" I ask him at the strangeness of the sentence.
"Ofcourse Marlene, you come out here in the world, you build a life for yourself and you just die.
Like you just die without saying goodbye, without making amends, without forgiving, without letting the grudges turn into nothing. You die with the burden of what ifs. That's funny." He laughs, a kind of laugh that's full of exertion and strain, and a throbbing pain.
I look at the stars in the sky, we are both sitting on terrace, there is no roof above us, the roof is sky.
The moon is full and there are stains on it, breathtaking stains, flaws that make it much more attractive to ogle.
I intertwine my hand in his and it fits perfectly as if the gaps in my hands were there for him to fill in.
I look back at sky, finding patterns of stars. Thinking about what lies beyond, where our eyes are incapable of taking us.
I close my eyes and think, a picture morphs in my mind, it's him again.
I flinch at the thought, the visualisation of him in my mind not out of hatred or disdain but because I don't want my memories to go back.
Last month, professor louis died, the part that hurts the most is that he wasn't just a professor, he was our parent, the man who aided those that were left behind by their own families. Dean, my boyfriend and I have been living in an orphanage. He had been with us for as long as we can remember.
We were eleven when he first came, we weren't welcoming to him. We were rather annoyed by his kindness at first thinking it was
Just a passing emotion, that it would soon wear off but it never did. He taught us, not the theory, he taught us how to live life. How to guage our feelings, how to love people and live with all its imperfections and pitfalls, all the parts that we didn't think were normal, he taught us language of love, the brutality of time.
We loved him with all of our hearts, each and every one of us but then one day, he just went away and left us all behind. All of a sudden? Just like that.
My eyes are filled to brim with tears. Vision blurred. I take a deep breath, letting the tear roll down.
Dean is so right, death infact is funny, how it rips apart hearts, brutally and unpredictably.
"Dean, what do you want to do before you die?" I ask him, contemplating the answer he might give.
I see him close his eyes, breath in a handful of air, let my hand go.
He whimpers and says.
"Everything and maybe nothing, maybe just enough to survive, maybe nothing at all."
I don't ask him any more question about what he means because I know exactly what he means and just like that we drift into a slumber, let hours pass by while we inch nearer to the end of our own time.