Death
I don’t know anything about death. I don’t think I do, I never thought I did. Every day it seems I know a little less. Today was Riley Gale’s birthday. He passed last August, in his early 30s. Much much too soon. I remember that day was a state. Then things became even more upside down. Everything became dense, full of bad violent colors, and heavy. Like someone inside had turned on the gas. Could not light a match. Then two weeks later Wade Allison passed. Another friend, an angel. Upside down, now it felt like a tornado, or drowning. It was much worse in Texas. Each was from Texas and lived there. This was all in the midst of the pandemic. No one could grieve normally. Sometime around September the dam broke. But nothing changed for a while.
When people die, everything changes. One might wonder, theoretically, how it’s so shocking. Isn’t death universal? Maybe it’s Western grief. A fact is repeated: people die every day. Everyone dies. Sure. But I don’t think they’re right. On an emotional level they’re wrong. No one alive has died; none of us have gone through it. None of us will. All we are is alive. Then we’re whatever else. Death is the only thing we haven’t gone through. It’s less universal than it seems. We don’t know what it feels like to pass, to be gone. Those of who are very unlucky deal with eons of grief. When one person close to us dies it lasts forever. When that happens then we begin understanding the door.
After someone you love dies the whole world constricts. Space goes away… at its best, and it’s never any good, we pick up things, like lessons or meanings, or moments of clarity, or maybe even peace, for a minute or two. There are memories, impregnable, perfect and whole. If we’re lucky, we are able to trace out and block some, like scenes from a movie. The best it can get is to be reminded of a memory we forgot, by someone else who was there. I have some, which I can’t remember now. Many…
Today was foggy. There is video footage I wouldn’t trade for a house…. there are small miracles, like a photo, or a mutual friend. The big questions about life come up and get answered… everything changes though we don’t move. Mostly, grief is no good. You collapse in the shower… perspectives change… but who knows. You just try and accept it. In Mexico the dead walk among us, they say. That doesn’t sound bad. The Buddha says let go of what is not yours, and be mindful, and you won’t die. I guess that makes sense. The person who’s died has clearly gone somewhere better. It’s the people who love them that lose. There are regrets… attempts to hold onto routine… keep the trench from becoming a cliff, accept a thing so giant and crushing that it’s not really up for acceptance—in what universe does this person’s death have to do with me—and get a few hours of sleep, and not be a sideshow. I was a friend, but on the periphery. There is loss, love and distance. If you bend like a willow, you can accept just about everything. Doing that from much closer up seems different in kind and not in degree.
As the time passes, and sometimes it doesn’t, you work up to the crater in your life. I wonder, how can I be more like my friends? What can I do here? What can I learn? Stare into space… How can I help? Hours of thought about the true life of a person, everyone that they touched, how they must feel, yields a moment or two of real insight. Maybe. Grief is a reaction, something you feel after something that happens. Sometimes you drown in it, or just graze it. My loss is relative… another insight is both Riley and Wade faced people directly and were there for them. Maybe these are the stories no one shares until it’s too late. It’s a good thing to aim for.
Acceptance is harder. You expect them to be there. They always have been. With Riley it took till December. Power Trip had been nominated for a Grammy. I put on one of their records, for the first time since August, expecting to smile, to celebrate with my friend. This would be a good day. I was standing in the kitchen, when the notes hit I was making my lunch, and when I heard Riley’s voice my knees buckled and I cried. I might have fell over. I turned off the record. This is it. There isn’t anything else.
It just did not feel like a birthday today. Maybe I approached this one wrong. I’m not really sure. It’s the worst thing that’s happened. That’s the first thing you notice, the one thing that stays. There’s no other way to describe it. Some of us have more memories than others. Hundreds and thousands of them. We’re very lucky if we do, but I don’t think that has anything to do with the pain.
Love is a binary thing, it’s either there or it’s not. A beam of energy that’s no longer there. Massive, white-hot, too big to go away, there forever, just five feet tall… We feel him out there, and see him. He’s out there. He’s here. When you need him. There’s not a lot more that I’m sure of. It’s a nice thing to learn, I guess. Would rather not know, to be honest. But it’s true.
Riley was not very grievous. He’s said enough in his life that we don’t need to put words in his mouth, and we shouldn’t. I couldn’t myself. But it’s not much of a logical step to say that the Riley we remember and love sure doesn’t want us all grieving, trying to be sad for ourselves, for other people. It’s pretty easy to sense how he wants us to feel and to live. It’s the right way, I think. He had it all figured. But we loved him, and on days like today, the first birthday without him, it’s hard. What we feel he can’t change. Maybe he can. I try to let the waves wash over, and accept what’s coming, but I am still missing something. Whatever we feel that we’ve lost, we have, but it was all coming from him. It’s his light that’s out. But he’s out there. Just a bit higher.
Thank you Riley — see you soon.