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thank you so much for the book j i love it <333
should be going to bed but i'm probably going to finish this episode of peaky blinders, this last one, 'cos it's a half day tomorrow anyway. pulling a joe, haha; he justifies late nights thusly. just gonna sit here and ponder death. joe and i joke about "haha i'm going to die before you do, then YOU'LL have to be sad instead of me haha!" and i've been in that headspace from a darker slant. i think my mom's dying. my friend gave me a book, that ny best seller comic that's a memoir about the artist's parents aging and dying. the artist's senile mother talks about conversing with her dead brother , and her caretaker says, "every time i hear her talking to her dead brother, i see a shadow on the bed."
my parents tell me these stories. a week before my grandmother died, she insisted she saw my grandfather in the yard. my grandmother's friend explained that he had come to pick her up, to see her safe passage. forty days after my grandfather died, my dad kept smelling the scent of a particular flower. it was no flower near where he was. it was the scent of the flowers that grew in the cemetery where his father was buried. forty days after someone's death is important in his religion. there is a ceremony; there are prayers. that night my dad dreamed that he walked through a garden with his father. the next day he told his friends and family this dream and they all said the same thing: his father had come to visit him, to make sure he was okay.
i don't have strong beliefs about the afterlife out of a deep-seated anxiety about being wrong about it. but i am moved by how death can push love to the forefront. death as a reminder of love. i will be irritated by anyone dismissing my family's grief through empiricism and rationalism, even though i cannot say whether i agree 100% to the exact alignment of my family's beliefs. i don't know. my grandmother was widowed at 21 with three children. her husband died in battle. his portrait hung in the first house i ever lived in and i have memorized his face, black and white and somber and young. my grandmother had to wait a long time to see him again. i hope they're happy, i think. i don't know.
my parents tell me these stories. a week before my grandmother died, she insisted she saw my grandfather in the yard. my grandmother's friend explained that he had come to pick her up, to see her safe passage. forty days after my grandfather died, my dad kept smelling the scent of a particular flower. it was no flower near where he was. it was the scent of the flowers that grew in the cemetery where his father was buried. forty days after someone's death is important in his religion. there is a ceremony; there are prayers. that night my dad dreamed that he walked through a garden with his father. the next day he told his friends and family this dream and they all said the same thing: his father had come to visit him, to make sure he was okay.
i don't have strong beliefs about the afterlife out of a deep-seated anxiety about being wrong about it. but i am moved by how death can push love to the forefront. death as a reminder of love. i will be irritated by anyone dismissing my family's grief through empiricism and rationalism, even though i cannot say whether i agree 100% to the exact alignment of my family's beliefs. i don't know. my grandmother was widowed at 21 with three children. her husband died in battle. his portrait hung in the first house i ever lived in and i have memorized his face, black and white and somber and young. my grandmother had to wait a long time to see him again. i hope they're happy, i think. i don't know.