Even Death Needs Forgiving

It’s fickle, loss. 

It’s fickle because humans deal with it in different ways. Yet I stay forever more, collecting those that are lost. I take their hand and guide them toward a peaceful eternity. Yet, I can do nothing for those who lose and live through the losses. 

I cannot lose my life, I am eternal. I will never lose for nothing will ever be mine. Yet, I have lost the thing I held the closest. I have lost my humanity. My forgiveness. As a result of this never-ending cycle of Life and Death, celebration and mourning, I have lost my humanity. Ironic, isn’t it, that the one thing an eternal being can lose is something as fragile as the souls he delivers?

With a busy world, there’s only so much I can see at any given moment. My heart grows duller by the day as I watch businessmen at the side of a hospital bed instead of in a conference room. I watch as children, so new to this world and unblemished by society, pass to my side in their mothers’ arms. My heart, over the years, has created walls of thick scar tissue in order to protect itself, and though I do not have a heart to scar, I lose my humanity with every new layer. 

For an eternal god being, I hesitate to call myself a god for this exact reason, I am powerless. I have been around since humans have, and yet, throughout my thousands of years of existence, only once have I been able to stop Life from leaving, and that one time I let her leave anyway. 

It’s a selfish thing, Life. I do not steal, but she does. Yet, who gets all the praise, the beauty, the love? Two choices here and I'll give you the answer, it’s not me. 

I can only sit and watch as Life leaves each husk of a corpse, their soul drifting to stand next to me as they watch their loved ones say goodbye. I can only console them by promising a beautiful afterlife, a life of adventure and peace where one day they may see those loved ones again. When they come to me, wishing and pleading for more time, I cannot do anything but usher them to the other side. A new adventure for them, a new scar on my heart. 

Every new loss for humanity is a loss of a piece of myself. I could never seem to forgive myself for my feebleness. You may ask, why is Death so weak in comparison to Life? Are we not two faces of the same coin, two sides of the same cycle as the moon and the sun?

No, we are not. I am only the scavenger, I pick up the souls that are lost and escort them away. I am only a vulture while she is a lion. A selfish, powerful, apex predator. Little is known about her, even amongst us gods eternal beings. From what I know, and take this with a grain of salt, she is jealous. There is no one to hold her, touch her, love her. So she takes away others who feel the way she cannot and ironically, humans praise her for it while insulting me, the escort.

My heart, in seeing these humans cry and mourn and learn to love again, has learned to block out all feelings. The scar tissue prevents me from showing emotion, from having true compassion, and from forgiving myself for this wretched duty. I’ve learned to lie and compartmentalize if only to save any bit of humanity fragility I have, but I have none for I am not human, nor a god, just an existence, a scavenger, an ugly vulture. 

Yet, there was this one time, this boy. This is the time I mentioned before, the one time I stepped in and felt power and let it all crumble anyway. 

Despite all Life threw at him, he stayed happy. Where I forced myself to hide my heart with each death, he freed his. Though he has seen me multiple times in passing, though I doubt he has actually seen me, he never once denounced Death like so many others do when they lose someone. 

First, his father in an accident. A horrific car crash left a mangled body which could only be identified by teeth. The young boy, four or five, lay unhurt in the back seat. I saw that Life did not forsake him then, she did not want to miss the opportunity to give him more pain. He was loved dearly where she was not. She was jealous of this boy.

Second, his mother by some unknown factor. That unknown factor? Life. This boy, now eight, had just finished grieving his father. He had forgiven me for my sins, though they were not mine but Life’s, and she thought that if she were to leave his mother, he would grow more vengeful. She thought he would hurt others, giving her more pleasure for he could not have what she could not.

No. 

This glorious boy did not give up. He returned to his grandmother’s house and forsook all of his friends to move in with her. Where most would collapse in sorrow, he rose in triumph, determined to bring smiles to peoples’ faces. By this time, my heart had destroyed all its mangled scar tissue and become fragile again, forgiven again by this boy, and I made him and myself a promise never to let Life dry up my heart again, for maybe there is hope. Maybe I shall not become bitter as one does when they see Death time and time again, for all I need is to look into a mirror. 

Life became jealous of him, as she always does, and yet instead of leaving him, she left his grandmother. Now, this boy had no family left in the world. He was eighteen and forced to live on his own. He cried, yes, but after a mourning period, he continued in his journey to make people smile. In fact, he made it his life’s duty. 

And so the cycle went on, death after death, people near him refused to get close out of fear they would die as well. Sometimes, in the darkness of the night, he confided to God of his sorrows and no one answered, for there are no gods, not even I am a god. 

But I listened. 

Once he finished college, this boy, now a man, created a company to help make people smile. It did nothing in specific, but generated money to help bring smiles to peoples’ faces. It grew successful. 

As it did, Life became more vengeful. She grew fed up with trying to tear him down and tried to leave him, but I fought back. For the first time, I fought back, clawing at her to stay and protect him. 

When I tried the universe yelled back, Everything was perfectly in balance.

Though she may be allowed to leave whenever she wants, for that is the randomness of life, I am not supposed to interfere. Death does not give, Death takes. I watched as he did too much good, spread too much joy, there were too many smiles. He set nature out of balance. 

So I let go of the power, knowing that it would kill him. Knowing of the grief it would cause. Knowing of the balance it would maintain. 

As his soul wandered to me, it took a rather corporeal form and spoke.

“I forgive you, Death.” 

It was not his joy or passion that kept him going in life, it was forgiveness. At that very moment of his forgiveness, I too found mine. I found the forgiveness of myself, my duty, that I had longed for. He provided me this and thus, instead of escorting him to an Elysian Field or a Heaven, I keep him by my side. 

I constantly ask him if he wishes to move on but he doesn’t. He cries when we see children die, he mourns when a terrible accident happens, but he never becomes vengeful of Life. He forgives. Perhaps that is what I’ve been missing and longing for: forgiveness.

Forgiveness of this universe for creating my eternal miserable self. 

Forgiveness of Life for being so vengeful and stealing what I love most. 

Forgiveness of myself for my inability to stop anything, my powerlessness.

Maybe, I shall not mourn the loss of him and his presence and his goodness on Earth, but instead, forgive the universe for being this way and forgive myself for being who I am, not a god, not a scavenger, not a vulture, but a host. Welcoming people at the door with smiles just to make them smile once more as they continue their way to their next adventure. 

I am a god. I am not powerless. My power, in Death, is forgiveness. Forgiveness of myself for what I am. I accept my duty in this universe and forgive it. He has forgiven me already and I, I have now forgiven myself.