Vanishing

I am accustomed to the end of life.

I was born into an older extended family, and attended a church with mostly older members. By 10, I’d been to more funerals than a child probably should have. I am accustomed to the behaviors and theatrics and denial of the living amidst both the dying and the dead. And yet somehow, I was unprepared for the “dead to me”- how it feels when a person ceases to exist in your world while continuing to exist in the world at large.

There is a permanence to death, recognized stages one goes through when you remain among the living. There are storage shelves in your heart and mind for people whose stories have ended, places you hold them as they were, unchanging.

But what do you do when that person continues to live? Where do you store them as they are when they have the audacity to not remain frozen in the exact condition they were when they departed from your life? What stages of grieving do your people tolerate when there was no death? How is it possible to both forget a face and still see it?

When the “as it were” fades and the “as it is” begins to take over, there is an acceptance that comes with the knowledge there is nothing you can do. When the dead to you walk among the living, the denial can be infinite, forever simmering just under the surface waiting for a moment you would have otherwise shared with them.

I can speak to the dead, where they rest in the stores of my heart. I can marvel at how much room my heart has to grieve and love as the memory of their faces turn to light, their voices into warmth, their complexities into grace.

For the vanished, the only way to hold them as they were is to obsessively ruminate. To pour over every conversation, every missed moment, everything you wish you said. To breathe the air you would clear if you ever had the chance.

There are rituals for the dead. But you’re still alive.

I am accustomed to the end of life.

I still need a manual for the living.