When I saw this prompt ahead of time, I had my response planned out – What most people don’t seem to understand is that the world people see online is not the real world. It’s what people want you to see… But then something happened this past weekend that wrecked my planned propaganda diatribe.
I’ve known people who have passed away. I’ve attended funerals of loved ones… but that’s not even on the same plane of existence as what I went through this past weekend.
For three days I held the tiny, fragile body of a little guy I’ve known for over 10 years. He was too weak to move more than his head and shoulders.
I had to helplessly watch as the darkness slowly began to consume his light.
I listened to his lumbered and erratic breathing.
I held him against my chest with his head under my chin as his lungs took their last breath, his body seize, then relax… and a final twitch in his back leg as his spark extinguished.
I’ve heard people talk about the light leaving people’s eyes but always thought it was a way to describe the fact that they knew the person had died.
I was wrong. So very wrong.
After his final breath and body spasms, I looked into his beautiful blue eyes and saw no more Peanut. There was a dull blackness where a shine used to be.
Maybe the saying “The eyes are the window to the soul” was more accurate than I thought. Maybe the light we don’t realize we see really is the spark of the soul itself.
I don’t know. Right now, I’m grasping for answers. All I know is that I’d relive the last three years of my trauma before I’d endure that again -or even to avoid losing him to begin with.
I have cried for 5 days. Every time I feel as though I’m ok, the scab comes off and my heart bleeds again.
So what I believe most people don’t understand is the magnitude and bottomless void of death. It’s not until you hold a dying body in your arms and watch as their physical body transforms into dead weight in your arms that you can truly understand the value of life… that you fully understand how pitch black the darkness really is… and how it will reshape your very soul from that moment forward.
It will change you. For the better? For the worst? It’s a gamble for each individual who experiences it – But unless you’re some sort of sociopath, your soul will be altered once touched by the darkness that awaits us all.
Off The Rails 