Snippitts of Illusions

A man died up here last week. He was found in an abandoned house with a gunshot wound. I don't know why he was killed. I can't pretend to understand the suffering his family was going through. And I don't know the trauma the police investigating the crime are putting themselves through in order to find answers. All I know is two things: this man is dead, and I knew who he was. I didn't know him mind you. I didn't know his name untill a kid brought a missing sign to hang up in the store, but I had talked to him. He was a customer at my old job. A frequent customer. He'd come in during the morning, get something to drink and snack on. Then be on his way. I'm an outsider in this situation, and I'm not sad for it. I don't like the pain of loss, but I've learned to cope with said pain.

Death is funny. It creeps up on some people so you can see it happening to them as you're conversing. As you're watching. It was this way with my grandmother who died a couple of years ago. It can come quickly, when you're not expecting, the way it did with my father 8 years ago. There is a loss of not just a person, but of self. One of the people that you love, that help define who you are as an individual is no longer able to do that. The hole exsists for everyone who knew them. This is why we grieve. We grieve for what the departed meant in our own life.

Whether it happens suddenly or slowly it happens. It could happen to me tommorrow. I'm ok with that. It could happen to you tommorrow. I'm not nearly as ok with that. What frightens me more than my own death, far more, is the death of those I love the most. Not because I fear eternal damnation, that just seems silly to me. No I fear thier deaths because of the hole it will cause in my life. Selfish. Yes. But honest as I could possibly be.

A man died up here last week and although I didn't know him I saw the grief in the young mans eyes who gave me the sign to hang up in the window. I heard the barely controlled voice, pleading and almost broken ask me if I would. Even though I didn't know him his death, unlike so many others who've died that I haven't known, did affect me. It made me think.

posted by F.G. Shaw @ 2:56 AM