Like It Never Happened.

I’m sitting here mere hours after my Uncle, who has lived in my home for the past four years, and more than that, been my Uncle for my entire life and my father’s best friend until his 47 years ran out, and I’m reading blogs and celebrity gossip on the internet with the TV going in the background, like it never happened.

As if I didn’t just lose someone close to me, someone I loved. Brooke, his daughter, the cousin I grew up with who has been the closest thing to a sister I’ve ever had, is upstairs lying in what was her Father’s bed (but ceases to have any ownership now that he’s gone- though I suppose by custom everything that once belonged to him is now hers by right-) probably sleeping the xanax-and-wine-induced sleep of a daughter in mourning who’s lost her father Way Too Soon and I only hope it lasts as long as mercifully possible because that first morning without your Dad is one of the worst of your life. I’ll join her there soon. But first I’m going through the numb motions I’ve almost become accustomed to when readjusting to life without someone who was Just There.

And the family has left, and the hospice nurse has left, and the funeral home people in their black formal attire and nice silk ties have left, taking Uncle Dan’s broken, worn-out, frail and dead body with them. And just like when my stepfather died when I was 18, and when my Father died when I was 19, and when my beautiful, loving, life-living, deserving friend Stephanie died less than 2 months ago at the young age of 23, I’m aching at the thought and the stark realization that the rest of the world is going on, and for them, nothing has changed at all. Only the aching becomes more and more dull each time, almost like I’m actually getting used to it- which is something I never want to do. Because if it weren’t for us, those left behind, with the grief and the memories and the stories and the tears, it would be like the dearly departed never even existed.

Well, good thing for them that we’re here. To make sure someone notices that they’ve gone. To ensure it matters. So here we are with the emptiness, the cursed knowledge that we’ll lever talk to them again in this life, feeling sad for them but possibly feeling even more depressed for ourselves, and we lag behind just a bit with life. Yeah, we’ll go back to our jobs and to our friends and to random people who will all offer the same general condolences with varying amounts of sincerity, emotion, pity or empathy- but for now we’ll stay back from the pack a bit. Because once we rejoin them, and commit to getting on with our lives, it’ll be- almost- like it never happened.

Maybe I’m skipping around in the grieving. So I think I’ll go watch some Gossip Girl.


But this house is empty.