A Farewell

/The Lord is my shepherd/
/I shall not want/
/He makes me lie down in green pastures/
/He leads me besides still waters/
/......../
/Surely goodness and mercy shall follow all the days of my life/
/And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord forever/

I’m not exaggerating at all when I say that saying those words was possibly one of the most difficult things I’d ever had to have gone through.

I know it sounds weird, but for me, those words were basically a chore—something I had to say ‘cause I was called up to read a Bible passage for my sister’s funeral—and that fact didn’t make reading those words any less harder to do.

The thing is, I’m not the religious type—at least, not any more, that is. That part of my life died a bunch of years ago, and I doubt it’ll come back any time soon, if ever.

My sister though—she kept on believing in that shit—it disappointed her that I didn’t share her fervor, so our relationship became a bit tense since neither of us wanted to budge.

Even though our relationship became a bit tense though, we still loved each other. I wouldn’t have wanted this to happen to her.

There were so many things that we had still to do—so many things I wanted to show her and moments I wanted to share with her—that’ll now be little more than idyllic remnants in my mind.

That fact is one of the hardest things for me to get used to. I know it’s the truth and that I have to accept it—I’m not some guy in denial—but at the same time—I kinda would want to be, regardless of how stupid that might make me seem, ‘cause at least that’d let me get more sympathy, even though I acknowledge that’d make me look like one whiny-ass son of a bitch.

Life’s one of those things that are just really weird. We don’t really notice it while we live our day to day lives, ‘cause we’re distracted by all the things we do on a daily basis, but if you actually stop and think about it, you realize that life as a whole is made up of some really fucked up shit. It’s kind of like one of those really pervy BDSM things, where you’re basically forced to submit yourself to a hot chick intent on destroying you.

Life is like that. It fucks you. It fucks the shit out of you, and I know that all too well.

My sister and I used to be almost inseparable. We’d do all sorts of shit together and just shoot the breeze, goofing off like the bunch of shitheads that we were. Especially after the loss of my older brother, I held on to her for quite a while before we started diverging.

She was very passionate about her faith, whereas I lost all my interest in that after my older brother’s death.

I mean, it’s kind of hard for me to believe in an all-loving powerful God when you lose your older brother. Now that I’ve lost her as well....I’m not totally sure what I’ll do.

One of the worst things to ever have to go through in my opinion is having to bury your siblings. You expect to be next to them, like how I expected my brother to be with me a long time, but instead, I had to consign him to the cold dead earth. And now I have to do the same for my sister.

Man, I wish I could have them both back. Oh, what I wouldn’t give to have them, but for some reason—some fucked up reason—I’m still here and they’re not.

I can’t change the past—as much as I wish I could—so all I can really do at this point is to try and carry on their legacies and spirits so long as I roam this earth, and I don’t even know how long that’ll be the case.

Hell, for all I know, I could be dead by this time tomorrow, but at this point, I’m just numb. Some things just kinda go past you, and when they do, there’s not much you can do other than just carry on and hope that tomorrow will be less shitty than today was.

But if there is one thing I do know, while I’m on this roof, staring at the darkened sky as wisps of smoke fly up into the air, it’s that I’m me, and at this stage, I think that’s probably the most comfort I *can* get, at least until the passage of time heals the wounds of their deaths.

Some things just are, and at this moment, though I’ve had to face many losses, everything feels normal. And right now, that alone is good enough.