Thursday, July 20, 2017

Restless Silence

"Say what you have own your mind
  To yourself and no one else until its nothing more than wasted time
  Time to hurt and time to wait
  Time to see that its too little and much too late "
-Aftermath (Koethe)

(Note: This is a work of fiction)
You never really know when a person's gonna die. Or who's gonna die for that matter.
Family, Friends, Lover... We're all equal in deaths eyes.
And no matter who dies, life goes on, and you can't do anything about it.
But really, life never just goes on.
In a way, death makes you immortal, if only in others memories...
And in that immortality, it shakes the core of those who are still mortal by living standards. If only by the impossible silence they've created with their death.
That was how it felt my best friend, Will, died.
And if you think just learning a person died was devastating, it isn't as heart crushing as being the one to find them dead.
I should have predicted it, actually. Will had always been so happy and always had this smile on his face.
You wouldn't have noticed anything was different the past few weeks until you realized that his smile was far different from the one he had before things started to go wrong.
It wasn't like he was happy.
It was more like he was refreshed. Peaceful.
And my stupid mind couldn't comprehend the difference between the two until I finally took notice.
So one day he started messaging me out of nowhere to talk. So we did. We always talked.
That was probably the last time I saw him alive.
It was that night that I realized that something was wrong.
The day, we talked about memories that passed us by. Remincing was normal, but not to the extent where it got so far to how we met. And then we talked philosophy and how the world was changing and that life just went on.
He seemed so tired and refreshed at the same time.
It was 12 midnight when I realized that, so I decided I'd just go in the morning and see if he was okay.
When I got to his flat with the spare he gave me, I found him. Slumped on his refrigerator with a bottle of pills on his right hand. Belive me, I did everything in my power to try and revive him. I was CPR certified and I wasn't about to let my best friend die.
But he did.
And the medical examiner told me he had been dead for over 8 hours. So there really wasn't anything I could do.
It was at that moment that I felt this nagging, deafening silence pierce through me as the days went by with the fact that my friend has passed on, way too early than he should have.
There was no note to why he did what he did.
But there was one video on his phone. It was the last one he ever made. Like 3 hours before his plan.
He beamed that stupid refreshed smile again at me and with unnerving graititude, he said:
"It's a wonderful day. Wonderful life. I hope everything has been wonderful. I'll see you again."
There was nothing after that. Just that smile turning into pursed lips with a faint hint of the vanishing smile and one turn of his head.
His bright, gray eyes. Tired.
And nothing.
There was no whys he left behind.
Just whys that will never be answered.
I could never comprehend why things turned out this way.
He was loved, he never showed anything to make me or any of his friends believe that anything was wrong.
That he was always just smiling at us, telling us to have a good day.
This man that I vented to when my mother died. This man, who saved my sister from drowning. This man, who touched the lives of many others...
A man who saved everyone...
And no one was there to save him.
And in his wake, he left a bone crushing silence in my heart. The mark he left on me and our friends, aching for him to come back.
But he would never come back.
And time would renew again without another one of his trustful words or his smiles.
Sometimes, you'll never get a reason, and for that reason itself, you just have to find your own way of closure.
People say it gets better. And it probably will.
But never forget to realize that pain will stick around and it can be awhile before it really does get better.
So in the days after watching my friend get buried, I contemplated how I would continue.
Should I just dive after, ask him in the afterlife myself?
But then, why?
It leaves a lot of whys.
So instead, I took my time... I took the time to grieve and appreciate that he was here for me, if only for a while.
And as time went by... I coped... I healed...
I'll never understand why... And I probably never will...
But after a while, the silence didn't pierce my heart or ears.
Instead, it brought me warmth as I cherished the memories of his immortality.
And that in itself... has let me move on....

-Authors Notes
This short story shows us how life is an unpredictable element.
That life will move on as people vanish.
And that at some point, you have to just... Move on...
-Thanos Venge

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