There are times in my life when I feel that some losses would be less sad for me if the people actually died. Not because they don’t matter. But just the opposite. Because they matter so much, and the sorrow of a lifetime lost to addiction, fundamentalism, and denial is far more heart-wrenching to me than the actual death of that person. And when I long for their presence in my life and am faced with their emotional/substantial absence, I become overwhelmed by the feeling of death that infects me.

And because I love so deeply (still deciding if this is an act of foolishness or an act of courage)….I am wired to feel the brevity of disappointment when others in my life are not so inclined.

I have spent the youth of my life (I think that 26 counts as beyond youth….or at least nearing eldest youth) trying to “move on” “forgive” “forget” “focus on the blessing” and essentially numb myself to the terror of a very significant death. But I keep ending up at the damn funeral. It is as if the doors of the mortuary will not let me out until I have properly acknowledged the dead.

I have tried everything I can to get out of the deal. I have denied the death. But the desire for life kept haunting me. I tried the “I don’t care, don’t need that person” approach, but the death of my own desire defaced me. I even tried to wake the dead with songs of beauty and songs of heartache, but my songs were not sweet enough or sad enough to bring about the power of resurrection.

And so I stand, as I have probably always stood, facing the casket of one who matters immensely. And I know what I must do. I know that I must open the flood gates of grief and let my tears flow over the dead like the red sea washing over the Egyptian army. The tears of anger, and sorrow, and the tears of a promised land and hopeful future where there is love that is not rooted in guilt, or obligation, or pretense.

But there is no real casket, and I do not know the dress attire, or the social expectation of how to grieve the death of of a man who is physically still alive. Or how to protect myself against his guilt, and his pull, and his desperateness to pretend that he is not in fact dead.

So I stand in the dark, strange room, and I weep, like one who has never seen the light. And I do not know if the ressurrection of the dead will ever come, but I hope that my tears will at least be the ressurrection of my own hope for the light outside of this long, strange, tragic funeral.