The only thing I know for sure about death is that it’s coming. I do not pick my way through life expecting much else. I learned early that death is the only real punctuation. It’s a good thing to keep in mind. It keeps the small stuff small; we can do no better than keep ourselves peaceful and ready for our end.

Only one ship is seeking us, a black-
Sailed unfamiliar, towing at her back
A huge and birdless silence. In her wake
No waters breed or break.

Philip Larkin, Next, Please

People around me right now are coming to terms with their first, hard, crunching bereavement. A few months after a friend lost their father, their spouse said to me that they seemed to be getting over it. I’m ashamed that I almost laughed, but it wasn’t from malice. It had just been so long since I’d first come close to death that I’d forgotten how often we think we can beat it.

Now, of course, a year or so later, that friend is just starting to feel the real loss. But it has always seemed to me that it’s only as we lose those close to us that we start to realise what life really is. I tried here to draw together a basic panorama of where I’m at with the whole mortality thing, but to be honest, if you want to get it you need to buy me coffee. But I’m pretty sure I’m coming from a rational place. I do not expect to remain me, any more than a Lego house is still a house once it’s been taken apart and put back in the box. But equally I’m impressed with the fact that I get to be part of this carbon, clay, water, Lego universe at all, and my tiny little splash of conscious waking is clearly an almost unimaginably small part of that. Forgive me if my smallness makes me optimistic!

The end is part of it. It’s like winter coming. It’s sad but once you’ve accepted it, it’s a companionable, aching sort of sad, really. The loss of my dad and brother made an impact on the young me, and when I’ve been accused of being a peaceful sort of person (which does happen occasionally, when I’m well) it’s been this familiarity with the inevitable which has been at the root of it. Death is not the foundation of my depression; it’s the bedrock of my sanity.

Here, this’ll cheer you up.

I reread the entry for 7th February. The one where I was talking about feeling strong and becoming stronger and being a rock and being strong all that.

Trouble is it reads almost exactly like the Simon & Garfunkel song I Am a Rock, an ironic song about a miserable lonely poetical doofus who is trying to convince himself he’s strong enough to need nothing and nobody.

Maybe I don’t have blog absolutely everything.

---

Speaking of not having to blog absolutely everything, I have blown my nose at least twenty times today. I started counting at about 9am so actually it’s probably loads more.

I wonder what
Is the purpose of snot?
I know not,
But I’ve got
A lot.

Still I Rise

by Maya Angelou

 

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I’ll rise.

 Does my sassiness upset you?

why are you beset with gloom?

‘Cause I walk like I’ve got oil wells

pumping in my living room.

 Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I’ll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops.

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don’t you take it awful hard

‘Cause I laugh like I’ve got gold mines

Diggin’ in my own backyard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

you may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I’ll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I’ve got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history’s shame

I rise

Up from a past that’s rooted in pain

I rise

I’m a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

 Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that’s wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts that my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise
I rise
I rise