Death is a Promise
I wrote this one for my Great Mumma's funeral. RIP Mumma.
Death is a promise.
An unwilling, unruly, untrustworthy promise.
It can come when we least expect it,
Or when we do.
It picks us up by our shoulders and shakes us until we can feel the reality sinking in.
I mean, people die every day.
For some, it’s because the clock has ticked over and time is truly up.
For others, it’s an accident. A mistake. Not on purpose; a slip of a foot.
But sometimes, it’s a choice.
And I don’t just mean when someone takes their own life.
I mean when someone decides that it’s time.
Time to drift away on another journey.
The problem with Death is that more people than less think of it as “The End.”
The end of the book.
The finishing Epilogue.
But that’s not what Death is at all.
Death is the start of a new beginning.
A brand new book in the series.
A series written just for us.
Death is a discovery for those who wander. And we are those wanderers.
They may be gone in a physical sense.
But there’s a part of every person we meet inside of us.
The minute someone dies, their hand takes a stronger hold on our heart and we suddenly have a much wider grasp of how much they impacted us while they were still here.
Suddenly we begin to notice the little things that we each say or do and how it reminds us of them.
How much of an image of them we are.
Sometimes I wonder if that’s because they are still here. They’re still listening to what we have to say, laughing at our jokes, telling us off for our wrong doings.
Giving us guidance.
“If he was still here he’d find that funny.”
“If she was still here I’d be in a lot of trouble.”
It’s them. They’re there. With us. In our subconscious.
The minute they die we are just suddenly more aware of it.
And yes, sometimes we may feel alone.
Their physical body is gone and we can’t hear their soothing voice greet us.
We can’t laugh with them.
We can’t hold their hand.
We can’t hug them tight.
Being alone can make your head spin, your heart heavy. You think too much about it all.
But if you stop for a second, you’ll notice a warm fuzzy sensation tapping on your shoulder and saying hello.
You can talk to that sensation.
You can talk aloud about why the sky is blue, and why the grass is green.
They can’t say anything in return. But they can let you know that they’re there.
We can laugh at the memories.
And inside we’ll know that they’re laughing too.
We can tell them we love them.
And we know it’s true.
Love is stronger than anything. It’s a magnet in itself.
The thing is, they’re there with us, in that moment.
We were never alone.
They never left.
And they never will.
