Although being an agnostic, I sometimes think what it would be like to live your life over and over again. What a horrific imagination of hell!
We got the sympathy card from the vet clinic today. It spoke of the rainbow bridge and the reunion to come. It's so damn _tempting_ to believe that the loved ones you lost are in in fact restored to health and waiting for you to join them on the other side of this life. When you're grieving, that hope is like a fucking knife in the heart. You'd give so much, believe any goddamn ridiculous thing, betray any trust, just for that to be true.
I wasn't raised in any particular faith tradition. I'm weeping as I write this, uncertain what to believe, what to want, where to find comfort. I intuit that life is in some sense a circle, that the lives we absorb for our continuance must at some point be returned to the earth to nourish new life, that space must be made. I _know_ this.
It's no help at all. It does not help me grieve. This culture gives us nothing, no songs to sing, no paths to follow. We turn our faces away from death and loss, as though if we refuse to look at it and keep buying shit, it will not come for us. There are no tools to hand, and fuck this civilization for failing at the only things that matter.
I must stand up, continue, dry the tears so as not to scare the cashier at the grocery store. There are obligations. They're pointless, necessary, hateful, a life raft for a drowning man.
My parents are still alive. The dread suffocates.
Sincere thanks to anyone that reads this. It probably didn't help you to read it, but apparently I needed to put some blood on the page. Maybe it will help, someday.
-w
Although being an agnostic, I sometimes think what it would be like to live your life over and over again. What a horrific imagination of hell!
I have not believed in life after death for some time now, many years, and in this time I've ever told someone that they'll "see them on the other side" or whatnot. I don't tell them much of anything, but instead I just nod and let them feel what they are going to feel.
I'm an atheist, and I accept that this life is the only one we get. The desire to live and to enjoy the lives of those around me is very palpable, and I know that to stuff down the despair at their loss is just to reject reality. It hurts hard to not have those crutches to lean on when those we love have passed away, but it is in these dark moments that the light of good in life is brightened. I wish you well.
Thank you. I agree that this life, this world, and all our living relationships are primary...it just didn't hurt so hard when I was a younger man. I've had many animal companions, and sent them all to the clearing at the end of the path when they could no longer live without pain. But rather than getting used to it, every loss stabs deeper than the one before. The 'wisdom of the old' kind of sucks.
I don't know what happened or what anyone did
But from my earliest memories, I was a very melancholic kid
When anything close to me at all in the world died
To my heart, forever, it would be tied
-- Sun Kil Moon (I Watched The Film The Song Remains The Same)
Felt relevant. Maybe you'd find comfort in the song, it's very beautiful and also dark.
This was me two years ago, almost to the day. I did a lot of full-body sobbing in those next couple of months alone in my apartment.