Space is the Ocean, Matter is the Shore
My parents are both dead, sorry! My dad died when I was 27, and my mom died when I was 29. I am now almost 34. They both died suddenly, insofar as alcohol and substance abusers with related and unrelated health issues can die suddenly. Both their deaths were shocks to me, but my mom’s was stunning. When the call came, I simply responded with, “Oh, okay. Are you sure? Okay.” I still haven’t fully registered that she died. I wasn’t able to fly back to the United States afterwards. I didn’t attend her funeral, and I was uninvolved with the funeral and postmortem arrangements. My half-brother did almost everything I wouldn’t have; like pour out some of her ashes into a parking lot, separate them, give a tablespoon of ashes, in a fucking dime bag, to one of her literal opps, and then stored the remains in a jar atop his bar, surrounded by alcohol. What is wrong with him?
Death feels like looking down at the barrel of a gun, like looking into the scope of infinity. An infinity of possibilities that will never come about, or maybe you just can’t see that far? An infinity of meanings and speculations. An infinite molecular dissolution: the atoms that bound together to form bones now seep into the atmosphere, the water molecules once urinated, which were once swallowed by a neighbor and circulated through their blood once more — now become rainfall in a drought. The infinite thoughts of what if. What if they had stopped smoking earlier? What if they had died later? Why did they die? Why did they die the way they did, when they did? This hole will never be filled. Only by asking does it stretch further open, and only by surrendering do you forget that it cannot and will not ever be sealed.
I realized my parents were my parents in 1BC (they were my parents from the beginning of time), and they’re my parents at the end of eternity. Just the way I’ve been my child’s mother since the day I was born. I just can’t see my parents in physical form. I think they speak to me through my genes. I think when I exercise and take good care of myself, I’m reverse-healing them. I’m taking care of the body they lent to me, that we share, and which was let to them by their parents, and so on and so forth… We are taking turns filling up bodies.
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