Dear Mother/Father God: Before this I thought life and death were two different things. I was in the land of the living, so death didn’t really exist: perhaps for old people or sick people, but in those cases I always thought death wouldn’t sneak up on you, or make you change all of your plans. I hadn’t met unexpected death before, and I didn’t think it was time for us to meet either. So I was a part of life and death wasn’t a part of that. When Steele died I was even still saying we should celebrate his life and death.
Every day I hear about people who are dead. People who have lost their children; their parents; their husbands, wives; their friends. There are all of these dead people and we’re still alive. People are mourning all around us and life just keeps going on. It’s like death is a part of the earth’s renewal cycle: today a child is born, tomorrow a child is laid to rest. Perhaps dead people are fertilizer for the earth’s crust. Now I realize there is no life separate from death: contained in life there is death. Now I just have to live with a dead person in my bed. People say he’s gonna be with me forever. If we could see the dead, everyone would probably have a dead man’s posse following them around, and we could learn about their past in conversation with the people of their dreams.
Some people have a really big posse, and they are still so alive. I have a lot of respect for them. There must be a way to make friends with death. Maybe I can learn if I walk in the shoes of all those people numb to the world because of death, and those people full of life after death. They say you can learn a lot standing in someone else’s shoes. I walked around in Steele’s shoes, the ones he wore at his death bed. What is there to learn standing in the shoes of a dead man?
I got these new shoes and I’m convinced they’re not my size or my style. Everyone keeps insisting I try them on and see. I’m not ready for any surprises. My birthday isn’t until September.
We’re all in this race to the grave. Maybe if I stay inside my lane, focused only on the finish line, I won’t notice when people around me drop out. That way death won’t sneak up on me again. Maybe I’ll try on those shoes if they’ll make me run faster.