These are just a couple of thoughts from a personal narrative that I'm working on. Still figuring out what I want to say and piecing together the emotions and the words, but I figured I'd share a little bit.
You never take enough pictures of people when they’re there, and then they’re gone and you search everywhere to find something to substantiate their existence, to make them seem real again. And you think that maybe it was all a dream but you can remember all the things you did together and you mouth to yourself their favorite phrases or close your eyes and picture their faces just to remember. And then you think that maybe it's just a really bad joke, but then you go to his house and his mom cries and Melanie won’t look you in the eye.
...
I’ve always wondered what it’s like to really cry at a funeral, and I still don’t know. When grandpa died, I cried, but that was because mom was crying– I didn’t really understand what it all meant. Death is, at first, a stranger in the corner, and you don’t really get it at all. You just start to not remember anymore, and that’s what death is for you. It’s not the bullets or the bombs or the cancer that they show in all the movies: it’s just a not-there-anymore, an absence.
