Hold on, Tom Waits
I couldn't sleep. What if on NYE, I had a fine drink and walked down to the water to let it take me? Would it be so bad? I hear drowning is awful but what if I could experience it as joining the sea? Me, after a night with my words and dreams and memories ... holding on to the music that let's me sleep, sooner or later.
Then I thought how unfair that would be to folks I suppose have some claim to loving me? Perhaps I might make a playlist with a carefully chosen song for the folks who matter most? Would they be able to hear it and carry my love with them all their days? Would that suffice? Would it be okay that I'm just tired.
I like to think it would, that they would learn to carry a song for all the memories and it might bring joy after a time after all the hubbub of "we didn't know". Folks always know. Or at least I do. We all make the same calculations... get involved? don't get involved? Its too much. Folks are responsible for their own lives, no need for [me] to engage. People can only be saved by themselves.
What utter crock.
We aren't born alone. At the very least we have a mother quite engaged in the process. We don't die alone. Our lives touch others' lives. Our ends ripple in ways we cannot imagine, not that we'll be around to worry overmuch.
Perhaps I'll make that playlist one day. I don't know. I know I imagine living a life so alone for how many number of years I have left...and I cannot imagine the lack of joy or why anyone would want to be this alone.
I can't live, if living is without you.
At the very least, I cannot imagine it.