(no subject)

[pensnest]

The first prompt from sunshine_challenge is up. It's Hades.

Hades is the god of the dead and the king of the Underworld with which his name became synonymous. Despite modern connotations of death as evil, Hades was actually more altruistically inclined in mythology; his role was often maintaining relative balance between the realms. He was often depicted as cold and stern in his judgement, and he held all of his subjects equally accountable to his laws. Above all else, Hades ensured the finality of death and that none of his subjects ever left the Underworld.



I don't tend to write about death much, but here's a link to a story that does have something to say about it: First Blood

Under the cut is what poured out of me when I started to think about death. You may prefer not to read it.



There's nothing quite so final as death.

I don't happen to believe in an afterlife, the continued existence of the soul, etc—but even if you do, and you hope to see your dead loved ones again some day, you still know that you won't see them again on this earth, in this reality. There are only thoughts, memories, and ghosts.

There has been a lot of it about lately. A very dear friend died of cancer back in May. I wish so much that she'd had the chance to enjoy life as she so very much deserved, free (more or less) of responsibilities and able to take pleasure in her grandchild, her friends, and life generally. Instead, she's dead.

Another friend, someone I got to know more recently, died not very many weeks ago without telling our group that this was on the horizon. I'd had an inkling and wasn't too surprised, although many mutual friends were shocked at the news. She was a lovely person, and there has been an outpouring of grief and condolences, but whatever we might have wanted to say to her before she left us, we can't. She's dead.

My father-in-law's death was in many ways a relief. He'd been in gradual decline for many months, and his last month was the kind of thing you wouldn't force a dog to live through. He asked for death. He lost pieces of his personality every day, and by the end was only 'alive' because he was still breathing. Fighting to breathe, because he was too stubborn to stop. It was only, I firmly believe, the relief from pain that morphine brought, that enabled him to let go. Yet there are still little ghosts of him around the house, where he lived with us for more than four years. Reminders of his presence in objects of all kinds; the occasional noise in the house that makes me think for an instant that he is there; the routine of our days, now uninterrupted, but where I sometimes find myself expecting him to come in and ask for help finding something on the television. But he won't, because he's dead.

It's just so final. When my little cat was killed in traffic last year, I wanted so, so much for it not to be true. I wanted so, so much for this beautiful little corpse not to be my cat. But it was. I'd never video'd her and her sister weaving about before and between us as we delivered dinner, zipping and unzipping and pushing each other into the furniture. And now, every time Sable performs that particular dance, I'm reminded of Princess Fluffykins. Who's dead, and buried beneath a large stone in our back garden.

My mother was not at my wedding. There are people who'll tell me, Of course she was there! I don't believe them, or whatever afterlife makes sense to them—however comforting it may be, it isn't real. No, I have never felt my mother's presence since she was murdered, not when I got married, not when I had my children, not ever. I can see vague ghosts of her, in the artwork she left behind and in my daughter's smile, which was also my mother's smile and is mine, too, but she isn't here. She's dead.

My father is dead, too, and my beloved and wonderful grandmother. I still miss her, and the ghosts are riding about in little red mobility scooters, or wearing felt hats and nattering on buses, or growing in my garden—goldenrod, Japanese anemones, raspberries. My father hasn't left as many ghosts, though I miss his wonderful bass voice. Christopher Lee, in the extras on the Lord of the Rings DVDs, is a perfect ghost of my father, the same voice, the same intonations. But my father, too, is dead, as is Christopher Lee.

It's a horrible finality. Suddenly there is a hole in life where a person should be (or a cat, or anything cherished). There's no going back.

There shouldn't be.

When I was nine, my mother freshly dead, I had dreams about her. She'd be walking along the beach in her familiar cabled sweater and stirrup leggings, but her face was gone, her head was a giant shell, like a clam, and it was terrifying. I'd wake up, and think, no, it's all right, she's dead.

The dead have to stay dead, and we have to live with it. That's life.

Comments

[pensnest]

I've found that the worst deaths have been the sudden, unexpected ones (usually violent, too). The people who've died of, essentially, old age or a long illness, have been much easier to accept. They were natural deaths. But yes, death is an inevitable facet of being alive, so.