What Happens When We Die?

People can’t comprehend death. How could we, if you think about it, when every single day we work on living, surviving, breathing and being? We’ve woken up from every single nap. We recover from the jump scares our friends pull on us to laugh at our reactions, and we’ll learn things tomorrow that we didn’t know today. They’re all pieces of our existence, all keys to life, and we couldn’t possibly understand what it would be like if all of those things blew out like lips to a candle. It’s a mystery that nobody can explain. Apparently, we have to wait until we die to know.

That’s why when my friend died at the age of nineteen, just months ago, I despised almost every single human interaction. I’d be bombarded by people that I know meant well, but that would say things that got me to start digging my own grave and following him beneath the soil. “Everything happens for a reason,” they say. “He’s in a better place now,” “God needed another flower for his garden, another angel,” “he’s always with you, looking down on you”.

I’m sorry, but there is no good enough reason to take someone away from the ones that loved him. God is loving, that’s what they say, so you think it makes sense to tease us with someone who comes through and who cradles our burdens and who makes us laugh, who soothes us with his singing voice and whose hands on a guitar are played like its his own body, just to take him away? In what world is that supposed to be funny? In what world is that heartfelt? Tell me, how could there be a better place for him than here, down the street from me? Tell me, how could you expect me to believe that God is getting greedy, hoarding more and more people from us every single year -- no, every single day? Tell me, why should it console me that he's looking down on me, when it doesn’t change that he’s so painfully far away? Tell me, why was I allowed to turn nineteen when he didn’t get to finish his? Why did our promised “next time” have to be ripped up right in front of me like this?

That’s not consoling. It makes me more angry than anything, actually. It tears me up more than I’ve already been. Such a thought is more disgraceful than the idea of death itself. I’ve never felt my heart be so heavy, but empty at the same time. Before I experienced loss, I wouldn’t have known that that makes any sense. How could something so empty feel so heavy, anyhow? But boy, is it true. There’s a weight within me and I don’t know how it got there. An anchor is pulling down my heart, shouting that I’m not allowed to go anywhere and live on the way I used to, and yet I look down and the anchor doesn’t exist. I’m being dragged down by a weight that is nothing but air. What could drive you mad more than that?

This is me saying goodbye to more than a person. He was more than flesh, more than organs, more than blood, more than skin and more than bones. Yes, this is me saying goodbye to what we used to have and what we used to be.

This is me saying goodbye to the times we gathered up every peso we have to go to the sari-sari store across the street for their ice cream. We used to lie and say it was only “half good” as if our standards were higher than what we got, but we wouldn’t be able to stop eating it for hours. This is me saying goodbye to the time he bandaged up the wounds on my knees and my shins after my clumsy self tripped and fell, and the apologetic look on his face, the locked jaw that could barely cough out an ‘I’m sorry’ because of how frightened he was when it wasn’t even his fault. This is me saying goodbye to the times he commuted from the other side of the island to see me, bringing me warm soup and goodies when I got sick. It had to have been exhausting, but he never once complained. In fact, he did it again and again when I told him he could stop and when I told him that I’d heal up just fine on my own.

Goodbye to the times he managed to bring out the toddler in me. I was always too painfully shy, but when his energy clashed with mine I could run around an open field of flowers without a care about the people who stared at me funny. We’d pass out underneath the bright blue sky, and when it’d start to rain, we’d tease that the clouds were so disgusted in our faces that it had to vomit, because we were close enough to take that kind of joke. Goodbye to the late night phone calls and text messages. He was the only person who could manage to stay up as late as I could, and our midnight brains brought up deep secrets that we never told anyone else, all words that I would regret if I told someone else, but that I felt good about when it was him.

Goodbye to our plans out to the mall, to our slumber parties, to our stupid pranks, to our city drives under the stars, to our coffee dates, and our inside jokes. Goodbye to the gifts of chocolate he brought me, the trips to the arcade, to our failed cooking attempts, to his unexpected visits, to our mini picnics, to our dumb bickering, to our note passing, our photos together, the board games and the competition making the room hot, the concerts of artists he didn’t even like because I dragged him with me, simple grocery shopping, and the song covers.

Goodbye to the chance I could tell him I loved him. I always told myself I could do it tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow. It was always tomorrow. I could never get myself to work up the nerve to tell him the truth and confess, and now I’ll never have the chance at all.

So you know what? I don’t care if he’s in a better place now or if God needed another flower for his garden, if this happened for a reason or if he’s looking down on me. I can’t stomach that, and maybe I should be sorry, but I’m not. I can’t let my stomach churn forever. I can’t go on for the rest of my life feeling numb or feeling like I’m bleeding internally. I just can’t do it.

No. I won’t. In my mind, he’s in a deep slumber that he can’t wake up from right now, but he will someday. In my mind, I’m going to see him again, I’m going to hug him tightly, tell him everything he’s missed while he was away and we’re going to go on gossiping without shame like we used to do. I’d rather believe that God can and will wake him up someday, rather than believe that he chose to take him away from me, and that I just have to be patient, hold on a little bit longer. It makes more sense. It makes more sense that the world spins with love.

Until then, I’ll do everything it takes to be sure he’s remembered the way he deserves to be. Part of me died with him, I can feel that it did, but that doesn’t mean that a piece of him can’t live on with me. With us, until the day he comes back.

That’s how the truest version of me will shine because the realest version of me was with him. That's how I cope. That's how I love him now. That's how I miss him.