On Death

I have attempted to write this post a number of times over the last week. This topic has been festering within my mind for longer than I would fancy considering, so in the tradition of what I have discovered this blog to be, I have attempted to scrawl my thoughts onto the page. Unfortunately, I have been halted in this pursuit, because I keep falling into a trap that I would very much prefer to avoid.

Anger.

I hate death. I despise death. I find no comfort in the thought of its release, and I find no joy in its tendency to necessitate the remembrance of life. Some people may find this ironic considering that my chosen field often includes death in some fashion, especially if I am lucky enough to choreograph a particularly brutal fight scene. However, the aesthetic honesty of violence bears a sharp contrast to the actual reality of death, because at the end of the fight…my partner gets back up. They rise, they bow, and if we want, we can go grab a drink.

I never grabbed a drink with Kassi or Elliott.

Kassandra Keyzer and Elliott Orr are two of the people I felt rather close to in high school and a good amount of college, and within the last year, I have attended both of their funerals. Kassi was murdered by a family member at 21, and Elliott died of cancer at 23. Throughout their lives, they were two of the happiest and most caring people that I have ever known, and beyond that, they were two of the strongest Christians that I have ever known. Now, when I mention that, it bears importance, because neither one of them was judgmental or forceful in any way about their faith, but it undoubtedly defined them. For my money, they appeared to be the type of Christian that Jesus could have intended, because they radiated love and compassion consistently.

Throughout the last few years, I have fallen away from the church for a variety of reasons, and when I started writing this post, I used a lot of those reasons to lash out at the God I had once trusted so completely. My initial writings contained pages of hateful language and proclamations of pure, unadulterated malice at a creator who I thought had abandoned His most devoted followers. Those feelings have not disappeared, by any means, but out of respect for both of their respective legacies, I feel as though I should refrain from such indignant actions in favor of a more leveled approach.

But that doesn’t make it easy.

Death is not easy in any way, and I get extraordinarily frustrated when people shrug it off as anything less than a monumental and catastrophic event. On a Monday, there is a person that I know drawing breath and talking and existing, and on a Tuesday, all of those processes have stopped. There is no more breath, there is no more speech, there is no more light, and the he or she that was has now been reduced to an object meant for transport and burial. This concept still blows my mind. I suppose that I contained a relatively common knowledge of death before the passing of Kassi and Elliott, but the true weight of death is unable to be conveyed until you walk into a room with someone you once loved inside a box.

One of the usual methods for dealing with the death of a loved one, especially before their time, is the repetition of the sentiment, “They’re in a better place now.” This theory of a glorious eternity lies at the root of the large majority of the world’s religions, and as far as my experiences go thus far, it is present at 100% of funerals.

They’re living in paradise.

They’re the lucky ones.

They’re in a better place.

But I want them here. I still do. Why do we always have to make death part of some universal plan? Why can’t it just suck? Because man, it sucks. It really fucking sucks, and in an admittedly selfish manner, I want to be validated in that belief. Let me see the casket and feel free to cry out in anger, because I never asked them out for that drink. Let me remember the best parts of their lives without immediately negating them with the thoughts of the paradise in which they now reside. Let me feel without restraint, because as a human being, I have been programmed with the necessity to grieve but not the ability to fully comprehend. I am working on that, I assure you, but I have enough awareness to admit that there is still a long journey ahead of me.

This may be the most selfish post that I have ever written, but in the past two years, I have cried over the deaths of two of the greatest people that I have ever known decades before their time, and end of the day…I’m just not okay with that.