He's dead, Jim...
So it's weird...
There's something about distance between yourself and people that you knew and liked, maybe not quite friends but better than simple acquaintances, you used to chat or follow their lives and work perhaps... but you moved, they moved, or you started putting off reaching out to communicate- often intending to get around to it 'soon'.
Maybe you knew each other only through online. Maybe it was geographic distance. Maybe it was evolving circles of friends that changed. For whatever reason you lose touch with them. Months go by without either of you contacting each other, perhaps even years. Then one day on a whim, or maybe through a friend of a friend, you reach out to see if they are still around...
...and you find out they're dead.
It's worst when it happens within the span of weeks or months of when you just recently thought of them. Like you feel as if you failed them somehow. There's a lack of closure. And they're already buried and their friends and families have had their closure, but you won't. To you, it's hard to imagine that they are dead and gone. But the realization is there, they're gone. How do you react? Do you grieve? Do you bury the thoughts and feelings back where they were before you even thought of them, comfortable in ignorance as you were? What if you feel like you were better off not knowing at all?
This has happened to me three times now in recent memory. Each time, I feel like I just sort of shut down emotionally. A twinge of regret, some sense of sadness that starts to rise like a sour burp and then is suppressed and disappears. Eventually I shrug and move on with life. I wonder if I hadnt even been told, if I would have reacted even for the brief moment that I did. Was it a show? Did I feel like I owed it to have some sort of human reaction? Is it normal to not dwell at all?
Some other folks I have talked to who lose close loved ones, start to just find it easier to deal with deaths of other less intimate faces without caring as much. Maybe they do actually, but it doesn't show as openly. Maybe they are all 'grieved out' and there's a sort of acceptance and realization that the dead don't care, they're beyond showy displays and giving a crap what people think. Others seem to think each and every loss deserves some kind of public acknowledgement. They want to talk things out, to share details of lives and experiences that are now lost. It's like they want some sort of validation from the people left behind that they cared. I don't know. I tend to side with the former POV, the latter feels alien and inaccessible to me.
If I concentrate, I feel a lost sense of fondness for these people that I knew. But I don't think about them ...not much anyhow. It's easy to forget about people. It takes virtually no effort at all. But every now and again something will remind me of someone I knew, maybe a shared joke, or something that will twitch the corners of my lips with sentimentality or nostalgia. And then I feel a twinge of guilt for not being warm enough or human enough to have said something, to have made some kind of gesture after the fact. But then the moment passes.
And I keep wondering, if I hadn't even known they were dead, would I even have the same reaction? Would I have even given them a moment's thought?
Mankind is so full of expectations. Even with an audience of only one, the shows we put on for our selves, they continue regardless if anyone even cares. It's dishonest. It makes me feel like a dirty liar.
We comfort ourselves by saying we're human. We desperately want to be seen as more than an animal. I hate that feeling. I like it better when I don't feel anything and don't owe anyone any sort of show.
But sometimes, I think I genuinely miss my friends.
There's something about distance between yourself and people that you knew and liked, maybe not quite friends but better than simple acquaintances, you used to chat or follow their lives and work perhaps... but you moved, they moved, or you started putting off reaching out to communicate- often intending to get around to it 'soon'.
Maybe you knew each other only through online. Maybe it was geographic distance. Maybe it was evolving circles of friends that changed. For whatever reason you lose touch with them. Months go by without either of you contacting each other, perhaps even years. Then one day on a whim, or maybe through a friend of a friend, you reach out to see if they are still around...
...and you find out they're dead.
It's worst when it happens within the span of weeks or months of when you just recently thought of them. Like you feel as if you failed them somehow. There's a lack of closure. And they're already buried and their friends and families have had their closure, but you won't. To you, it's hard to imagine that they are dead and gone. But the realization is there, they're gone. How do you react? Do you grieve? Do you bury the thoughts and feelings back where they were before you even thought of them, comfortable in ignorance as you were? What if you feel like you were better off not knowing at all?
This has happened to me three times now in recent memory. Each time, I feel like I just sort of shut down emotionally. A twinge of regret, some sense of sadness that starts to rise like a sour burp and then is suppressed and disappears. Eventually I shrug and move on with life. I wonder if I hadnt even been told, if I would have reacted even for the brief moment that I did. Was it a show? Did I feel like I owed it to have some sort of human reaction? Is it normal to not dwell at all?
Some other folks I have talked to who lose close loved ones, start to just find it easier to deal with deaths of other less intimate faces without caring as much. Maybe they do actually, but it doesn't show as openly. Maybe they are all 'grieved out' and there's a sort of acceptance and realization that the dead don't care, they're beyond showy displays and giving a crap what people think. Others seem to think each and every loss deserves some kind of public acknowledgement. They want to talk things out, to share details of lives and experiences that are now lost. It's like they want some sort of validation from the people left behind that they cared. I don't know. I tend to side with the former POV, the latter feels alien and inaccessible to me.
If I concentrate, I feel a lost sense of fondness for these people that I knew. But I don't think about them ...not much anyhow. It's easy to forget about people. It takes virtually no effort at all. But every now and again something will remind me of someone I knew, maybe a shared joke, or something that will twitch the corners of my lips with sentimentality or nostalgia. And then I feel a twinge of guilt for not being warm enough or human enough to have said something, to have made some kind of gesture after the fact. But then the moment passes.
And I keep wondering, if I hadn't even known they were dead, would I even have the same reaction? Would I have even given them a moment's thought?
Mankind is so full of expectations. Even with an audience of only one, the shows we put on for our selves, they continue regardless if anyone even cares. It's dishonest. It makes me feel like a dirty liar.
We comfort ourselves by saying we're human. We desperately want to be seen as more than an animal. I hate that feeling. I like it better when I don't feel anything and don't owe anyone any sort of show.
But sometimes, I think I genuinely miss my friends.