Mock Funeral
There was no funeral.
No flowers.
No ceremony.
No one had died.
No weeping or wailing.
Just in my heart.
I can’t…
But I did anyway,
and nobody knew I couldn’t.
I don’t want to…
But nobody else said they didn’t.
So I put down my panic
and picked up my luggage
and got on the plane.
There was no funeral.
By Alex Graham James
A Response
“I can’t. But I did anyway, and nobody knew I couldn’t.”
Isn’t that the summary of every goodbye I have lived through? How many times have I done the impossible, entered into the unimaginable simply because I must? The human spirit is resilient, determined to live, capable of withstanding much. All the same, every time I do something I can’t, I lose myself. Piece by piece I’m losing myself, trails of bloody footprints in my wake.
No words or imagery could ever be enough to capture it, and I’ve spent my whole life searching for how to explain something that is inexplicable. The sacrifice of innocence, the absolute helplessness of a child, the depth of the ache bound up inside my knowledge. Too much knowledge, too much logic, and I cut myself off from the relief of grief, thinking I hadn’t earned it. Wasn’t good enough for it. Isn’t everyone good enough for grief?
By Elizabeth Hemp