Salty air slapped at my sunburned face. The bottom of the orange sun began disappearing over the Gulf of Mexico, bathing everything in an ethereal purple light. Seagulls chirped incessantly, nagging beachgoers for food. It should have been serene, a nice moment of stillness. But it was hell on Earth.
Death. It comes for all of us.
My friend Jacob died on March 28, 2017 in Indiana. I sat on a balcony in Florida, hundreds of miles away, and mourned for him. I still mourn for him.
Jacob meant so much to so many people and I only wish I could have told him how much he meant to me.
I’d dealt with death in the past. Extended family had faded away, succumbing to natural causes. But I was emotionally removed from all that. Their deaths were inherently sad, but they were expected. I remember seeing the made-up face of my great-grandfather in his coffin. He just looked like he was asleep.
An eternal sleep. That’s all death was growing up. It was vague. Death was on the other side of a door with seven deadbolts and a chair nestled beneath the knob.
Staring at a casket holding the body of a childhood best friend is a far cry from seeing your great-grandfather’s peaceful face looking back at you.
Somehow, in the midst of a new spring, death broke down the door and held its dark cloak over the sun.
Grief is a process. Seven stages and all that. But for me it felt like there were 50 stages, and I was experiencing them all at once. Grief was an ocean, swallowing the sun and holding my head beneath the waves. And I had no way to fight back.
Jacob’s death tainted everything for a while. I was a bundle of frayed nerves, a hand with bitten, bleeding nails. I worried about moving on and what that even looked like. I worried if I was a good enough friend to him while he was alive. I worried about whether or not I should post about him on social media.
At 18, your relationship to everything is complex, in transit. Opinions are ready to be reversed at the flip of a coin or the harsh words of an authority figure. At 18, you’re not equipped to deal with real death. You don’t have the vocabulary or emotional intelligence to speak to your friends or parents about it. So, you let the world sit on your chest and push you slowly into the wet earth.
Why did I have to talk about my feelings? Talking about it made it real, and if I could just watch TV or talk about March Madness that meant he was still playing soccer or going for hikes. Still in this world. Opening up to the people around me seemed futile, a foolish attempt to establish some sort of shared experience. I didn’t want his death to be a shared experience. I didn’t want it to be anything but fiction.
My emotions were abstractions, unable to be calcified. Hearts were beating out of synch for months. And talking wasn’t going to change anything.
So, I sat in my room and listened to music. I don’t remember a lot from that time, but I remember the music. I listened to albums about loss and death and what life looks like after a life-altering event.
Music was my antidote, a salve to rub over my brittle bones. It was cathartic. The lyrics were concrete, conveying thoughts that rattled around my ribcage, but could never exit through my crowded mouth. The emotions were raw and therapeutic. These artists didn’t know me, but they knew what it was like to be me for a brief moment. And that’s all I really needed, some semblance of understanding.
Without those songs I don’t know how I would have processed anything. I would have been stunted forever, never growing past my parent’s front lawn.
Some days my lungs are on fire. Some days they fill with air. Some days I listen to those songs. Some days I strike them from the queue.
But most days I feel at peace.
And I hope Jacob does too.
