You know when you used to go to the water park and you’d play in the wave pool for countless hours. Then when you got home that night and laid down to bed you still had that feeling that you were still in that wave pool?
That is the best way that I can describe the feeling of living in the house now. I feel like I’ve been in a wave pool for nearly 2 years and I’m finally getting out..but there’s that fading sensation that I’m still in the pool.
As small as Kim was in stature, she made up for it in the way that she was such a force of nature. She definitely left her impact on that house. It still feels like she might be there. Just in memories, not in a ghostly way.
Just the other morning I was going into the shower and I could swear that I smelt cigarettes from the vents. It scared me shitless. I mean, it was like they were freshly smoked. I had to tell myself, it isn’t real, my mind must be playing tricks on me as I eased myself into the shower.
It is such an odd sensation to witness death so closely. Not like in movies or on the news, to see it up close and personal. I honestly still can not get the image of her corpse sitting in the bed with her mouth open and eyes halfway open as she turned to an ashy green color.
To think at one point in time the person that lived in that body was the source of all my rage some days. The source of utter frustration. Now it’s just a shell, already beginning to rot and all you can do is just look at it in horror. Just sitting there in a bed in the room that I grew up in and with your mom off to the side staring into space as a tear travels down her face.
I never thought I’d cry when Kim finally died. But when the time came I just lost it, right after calling my uncle to tell him. The act of saying it just opened the floodgates and Matt had to hold me because I just simply lost it.
There were a few more times since her death last Thursday that I would just cry because of a memory that surfaced. It happened while brushing my teeth, while driving to work, just discussing it with someone. Grief seems to know no boundaries.
Many people say to me, well she’s in a better place now, she’s at peace. I’ve even caught myself saying it a couple of times. But in reality, I have a really hard time believing it. Simply because I have no belief in any religion. I know it’s probably sad to some to know this but I just believe that we are fertilizer in the end. We are just a part of the cycle of life on Earth and that we just happen to be able to comprehend things more so than our ape counterparts. I myself actually find comfort that we just end. That we are unique to an extent and we only come around once. That there can only be one chance to try this thing called life and no way to go back or to live on in Heaven or as a newborn baby.
We all have a chance to make an impact on this Earth, negative or positive. The best part about this is, you can make that decision to the best of your ability. Unfortunately my sister Kim left mostly a negative one, mainly on people in her life. As far as the planet is concerned she probably didn’t make a dent in the fabric of society. She only lived life for herself, never saw past the tip of her nose.
I really hope that I’m looking past the tip of my nose. I hope that when my existence on this planet ends, that I did something meaningful for someone. Not for some postmortem vanity, but that someone benefited by my actions and were able to pass those benefits in some way to another person.