The living dead

There are many ways of dying. I’ve learned that soon enough as a child. When someone dies, you make your peace by mastering the idea of having our own time, our own cycle of life. Getting over the ones leaving voluntarily, by choice, by just walking out of your life is a little bit more complicated than that.


Keep living after death, soon the calm returns, melancholy remains, keeping them alive by usually remembering just the good times; we start turning them into heroes, supernatural beings, who are always by our side, watching our sleep, or so it seems. In our head they are perfect, nothing bad to recall, no horrible mistakes made all because they are not coming back.

The toughest to recover from are the ones alive and kicking, the tangible, audible, yet dearly departed ones. Looking for themselves, for their individuality, for their true self they left, unpredictable actions, morphing, making a new life. Leaving us in shards, emptiness and pain; trying to find comfort in a justifying lie or the bitter aftertaste of our sugar coated pride.

The stages of grief mutate when that presence re-appears every once in a while; in a comment, at a glance, in a picture seen by chance. They are still here, you know and feel. Yet not the same, not with you, not even near.

It is not easy to deal with the living dead. How to find peace and balance again? Time reveals: we screwed up by giving or asking for way too much; that protection was not needed on the contrary was bad, overwhelming, even castrating, nursing rotten feelings inside. Should we keep waiting for the right time for them to rectify? Do we really stand a chance or is just another lie? That love remains intact to eventually upraise. Is it really even possible to recover what has been broken inside?

November 2nd, day of the dead, reminiscence applies. Missing them, feeling them near and missing me with them as much. To the afterlife, to the new life, or wherever you guys are: I love you… in my own selfish way, in my own imperfect terms. The love remains, can you see the light?


...oh where are thou?