"Life is hard and unfair and then you die." It has been said a hundred times over in different ways.
My uncle is dead. Like the cat in the box he wasn't dead until the words are spoken to me, in my world. But out there in the real world, his heart stopped beating.
I try to live out there in the real world and I feel like I'm visualizing ghosts - no, not even ghosts; like I'm trying to sculpt rain. I don't belong here. I wasn't equipped for this.
Is he really dead until I've put my hand on his chest and felt that his heart isn't beating? Is he really dead until his body has rotted away in the ground? My cat is very much alive in me, as much as when he was actually breathing, so why would the death of a human be any different? In my world, since I hardly ever saw my uncle, if I never see his body, if I never go to the funeral, is he really dead?
It's not my uncle's death that upsets me, but the death of my uncle inside my father's world. And it's not the real world that scares me; it's my world. Me. And the wonderous ways I could destroy me, so easily, so fabulously, so beautifully.
Life really is hard and unfair, but what if the inevitable death is not the final injustice but the reward? "Congratulations, you made it. You survived." What do you think? More dramatically viable?