And He doesn't say a damn thing about death

God and I have been through an awful lot. From the hopeful beginnings of a child drawing angels on the walls to the disappointing lows of heartbroken cursing God to hell, we’ve been through it all. 

Or, at least, I thought we had. 

That was until I experienced my first death. That’s a first no one prepares you for, not even God. Think about it. People talk about how much joy and pain you’ll feel with your first kiss, your first lover, your child’s first steps. No one talks about your first experience with death, how it’s a shake you up to the core and turn out your pudding insides kind of sick feeling. No one talks about how you think so much about that person and their life, regardless of how much you might have thought about them before. No one talks about how much you think about your own life, your own ups and downs, your own friends and family, and Who would be at my funeral? Who would care? Who would miss me?

And God? God doesn’t say a damn thing. 

It’s an odd feeling, seeing everyone dressed in black and crying. And you’re wearing black. And you’re crying. And they all tell you it’s alright, that they’re in a better place now, that God is looking after them. And you nod and smile through the tears, because how are you supposed to tell them? How are you supposed to say I don’t know who you’ve been talking to but God hasn’t said a thing to me about looking after me or mine or them or anyone, but thanks for the thought, anyway. 

Their prayers are always with you on that day. That’s what really gets me, the prayers. As if God’s listening to them when he won’t seem to answer you. As if their thoughts and prayers matter when someone is gone and gone forever and no one, not even God, can do a thing about it. 

It’s a funny sort of empty feeling, being at a funeral. You’re surrounded by people, but in the end it’s just you and the ever silent God. Other people are in their own little minds with their own sorrows and their own one sided conversations with God. Me? I’m lucky, not having to stare at a casket or a jar of ashes. Someone else had that responsibility. Someone else had to look at the person they loved and recognize that they were dead and that God was there in the room with them staring at that person too and saying a whole lotta nothing. At least for me it was empty. There was no casket, no urn, nothing to look at and go “yes, they’re dead”. Maybe it’s better that way. Then you don’t have God staring at you, with you, looking at them and back at you. This way you just have you and God and no dead body between you, even though the death is still hanging there, like a veil that wasn’t there before. 

What is through that veil? It was so close then, but I couldn’t see it through my tears. I couldn’t see God through the veil. I couldn’t see nothing. 

In the months that follow, you feel like you’re walking through jelly. It’s wet and it’s sticky and it’s hard to move through but you’re supposed to act as if it’s not there, as if you’re just like everyone else who doesn’t have to walk through jelly even though you’re sticky and wet and tired. No one talks about this part either. The feeling lost part. How you can’t feel the ground through the jelly, how you don’t even know if there is ground beneath you. Nothing feels whole, nothing feels right. It’s nothing so dramatic like they write about, like how food is supposed to turn to ash in your mouth and you wander around listless and you cry all the time. It’s not like that at all. Food still tastes like food, but there’s a loneliness in your mouth that wasn’t there before. You don’t wander around listlessly, but your everyday nine-to-five feels a little bit emptier. You don’t cry all the time, but when you do it’s hard and heavy and it sucks all of the moisture right out of you.

And it doesn’t go away. That’s the hardest part. It doesn’t feel that empty forever, no, because you’ve got more to fill you up and it just keeps filling you up and you keep living your life and you keep being sad and happy and everything. But there’s a hole in your heart and in your brain, and it’s like a bruise: every so often you poke at it, and it hurts.  And it’s a hole, and you feel that hole-y-ness, that emptiness that engulfed you before. And it never goes away. 

And God? God never says a damn thing. No one talks about it and God never says a damn thing. And you don’t know if those prayers all those people sent God for you worked or not, and you don’t know if God can even hear you anymore. Sometimes, at night, you can feel God staring at you for only God knows why and you stare back and neither of you say anything at all. And it’s empty, and it hurts, and God’s not there, and He doesn’t say a damn thing. And it’s worse than when you were heartbroken, and it’s worse than when you cursed Him to hell, because at least then you felt like you were yelling at something, like you were being heard, but death doesn’t do that for you, it just creates this empty space where something should be and God can’t or won’t fill it and He doesn’t  say a damn thing about it. 

I don’t know if God’s there or not. I’m not the child that drew angels on the walls and professed “God loves me!” anymore. I’m a person who’s experienced that emptiness that death brings, those lonely nights where it’s just you staring back at God and not saying anything but why can’t He hear you and why doesn’t He help and why doesn’t He say a goddamn thing? 

Thank you, God. Thanks an awful lot.