A Requiem for the Inaudible Arrival of Autumn

When my grandmother laid on her deathbed in the room right below mine, I would try to understand the things she described. In my denying attempt to comfort her, I would try to distract her by saying positive, life-forcing words. Yet, we both knew her situation was fatal and those last few days would be our last together.

Though she had completely lost her appetite about a week before her departure, she would try to appease my worries by forcing bites of watermelon. Even though we both knew once I would leave the room, her body would again reject such attempts at sustenance. Her body wanted to stop. Such is the way of life into death.

I remember her description of attempting to eat and drink. “It feels fake, mija, the flavors have disappeared and thus any enjoyment has faded. It is pointless.”

This was my first and most powerful lesson on Death.

Very recently, I have again been reminded of those last few days of May 1997. I have felt the subtle beginning of the realization of death’s cycle. A very special belief and part of myself has begun to deteriorate, and once again I am standing at its bedside. This time the thing that is losing strength and refusing to eat is my faith in a very important relationship.

My best friend is a very special person, someone whom I have known for years. We have shared many magical experiences and I always believed that these things had created a bond that was unbreakable. Up until quite recently, I believed that our sentiments were mutually equal. I viewed this person as a brother to me, which in my eyes, constitutes the truest and strongest bonds existent in this life.

Upon my move across the world, I have found that our relationship was not what I thought it was. It was not brotherhood, but rather just friendship after all—which our blood has always proven, yet I would not accept. Though this may not seem like a very sad death to any observers, it is very sad to me, and I mourn it accordingly. It is not as if I am mourning the loss of a brother. My brother has not died—but instead, it is losing something that had never existed in the first place. And when this happens, there is nowhere for the sadness to go—not to the dead, nor in the ground—but only to myself and inside my heart because that was the only place where it was ever real.

So, since I have no real place to go with these remnants of feeling, I come here to the emptiness of cyberspace where my thoughts can go free and continue to float—much in the same way as trash into outer space. Perhaps one day, like the day my mother and I sorted through my grandmother’s worldly possessions, this floating cluster of feeling and explanation will be fumbled through by any other mourners of the non-existence in this world. And then maybe all of our candles and Japanese incense can burn in unison.