The One Stop Shop

I lost somebody...they are physically missing. I was left to deal with the fact that there would be no finding and no search party because I know the body is found but the person will not. I know where I can go and visit. Where I can talk aloud and have thoughts about and projected to this person. The person I lost is no longer here and exists solely in my mind although my memories and in tangible form - photos, writings, letters and cards. Nevertheless I have no idea of where they really are.
I can pen phrases and wax lyrical about how I felt at the time, how I felt immediately after and my feelings right now this minute but words can never convey the true depth of the loss, the sense of confusion and total lack of acknowledgement for the obvious truth. I was staggered in thought for some time afterwards until I came to realise that death is so very, very personal, not to mention absolute shit. We find ourselves understanding or misunderstanding it in a truly selfish way - in that we can only feel how we feel and this is the personalisation of death. For me I could not accept the truth for a long time - I found that I could appear as though I was accepting that this person was gone and the grief I displayed outwardly was the common garden kind. I cried, I cried every single day, all day for a very long time. I felt unbelievably drained and tired of wanting something I couldn't have and looked visibly sad, stricken and in shock but inside I thought that the person would come back. I don't know in which way, shape or form but that they would return and all the pain would go. This then transgressed into - they would come back but tell me they had to go again and now I believe in whatever eases the pain, whatever suits me because it still hurts so much.
A hit and miss position in our society that can relieve the damage of the death of someone we cared deeply for is the belief in the afterlife. It eases us, makes the long, long path of grieving bearable. We can tolerate the loss eventually by imagining some kind of higher place, a higher state that our loved ones have journeyed to after they died. Its convenient to have this idea and develop it into whatever scenario we personally take comfort from. Some people talk of heaven - where lifetimes are seconds and the lights are comforting all enveloping and euphoric. Other visions are of a Utopia where life is as it on earth but devoid of destructive emotion and all the things we have here on earth that bind us to be materialistic, its classless up there and everybody is accepting.
The body we lost, the warm alive body - the one that hugged us, made us feel wanted, needed and loved. The body that annoyed us and we stormed out, that made us cry and then made it better. The body that gave itself to us for own life is dust - we know this but have convinced ourselves that this is irrelevant - in actual fact dismissed the comfort of the skin and bones person because now we believe that the celestial being, the spirit is and was more important.
Convenience is something that we can cut and paste for our own ends - use at will and make us feel the way we want.
I do believe in something other than "Right that's it! Death is the end my friend" and I'm yet to determine how much of that belief is because I want to see my loved one again, want to be comforted by the prospect that are happy.
I have several doubts though and this materialises when I'm doing things that I know that the person wouldn't approve of. Things that the person would find horrid - and they are not watching me then! Oh no! They must be watching someone else or maybe doing something else?
I can find no proof of an afterlife - If I could I would be Rich!!Rich! I say Rich! But there is none.
Unless of course all the ghost, spirit, poltergeist sightings are true? And here I am so blatantly ignorant of the lack of proof because again - it would bring me hurt, harm and pain if I were to find no evidence. Convenience.
Of course it is unimaginably hard to accept that the spark has gone and this person you admired, respected and felt close to is now nothing but a pile of dust. And I point the accusatory finger at no-one..I too am a product of believing something of which I have no real proof but maybe the proof is the comfort, maybe that's the afterlife? We are sending our adored ones bodies into a self-initiated playground of hope and happiness...is it our uncompromising belief in the next stage of life that can give them and us the afterlife itself?
I do often wonder: Why do we put the bodies of our loved ones into the cold, hard unforgiving ground?
For most people an occurring nightmare ensues....the vision, the image of this person buried deep in the ground in a box, penned in and left to the mercy of the underground inhabitants - creatures that through evolution have found themselves to be in the earth for their survival and not placed there under a ceremonious hour for the purpose of saying This Is The End of My Life. For me this hour of lowering my loved one into this deep chasm of nothing but soil and living matter caused horrific thoughts of guilt and voyeuristic night images. My imagination increased threefold (and only really at night) by the sheer disbelief that we had lowered our person into something nobody in life would choose to go into. And therein lies my cultivated belief in 'There has to be something more than this'.
Its a tradition we have abode by for centuries. In fact evidence of the one of the first earth burials took place over 35,000 years ago but further evidence suggests that there may have been earlier burials in which humans were deposited deep in the ground, buried almost 14feet below the surface. Whether the same rituals or ones we use and adhere to now were used I could find no evidence of. But then the church and its belief systems came much after that. Of course its a natural progression of nature some would argue. To put back into the earth what was taken from it and to view the idea of human burial on those grounds alone I'm forced to agree but why the ceremony? And therein lies the question in two parts: Do we carry out the church service, the rituals of throwing earth onto the coffin, the prayers and the collective of mourners graveside to appease ourselves from the actual fact that we have put our sacred families, friends, lovers and children into essentially what is a pit in the ground? I can only comment on my understanding of why I found comfort from this and again it easier to accept when all around there are others accepting. The burden of my own grief was lifted when I saw other's in as much pain as I. And the overwhelming and untimely feeling of pride that so many came to this ritual for my loved one.
Secondly do we then relieve ourselves from undiluted grief by believing in life after death?
From my own point of view I'm staggered. If a body were to raise up from the ground (the celestial kind) and float, transgress or rise smiling and comforted to heaven in whichever spiritual form then why bury? Why not offer to the gods another way? Again from only a very personal stance I felt the body we buried was much too good for the ground. I felt like we had done an injustice because the ground wasn't good enough. I don't know how I feel now on the burial issue. I do know I don't care where I am placed as long as whomever loved me and I them still thought of me as I was before I died but its hard to take your own advice.....
Apparently burial is abstract thinking. To me it is a need now inbuilt in us to to get a handle on death. All of the things we do each day involve a time served or honoured ritual.
We had a heavy night on the beer last night and woke up feeling like a back end of a lorry smash so we have a cup of something hot, a brew. We may have a fry up - big Ole' greasy sausages and a runny egg and almost vomit at the thought or the infamous hair of the dog. We split from our lovers, wives, husbands and then then play songs that remind us of them and you think to yourself, "Why does this song have to play now?" as you're sitting in the traffic trying to get a grip on whats happening to your heart and head. You think about the times you had together and relate a song to it - the one that happens to be playing! Some even go down the old 'getting even', custom, the cutting of suits or discarding everything they own that was shared - the ritual of wiping the slate clean. The erasing of a person you no longer have in your life...daily rituals seem to serve a need within us, keep us sane maybe because after all what would we do if somebody took all of our customs/rituals away? But this has no bearing on the afterlife as a concept but only an indication as to why we do what we do to make ourselves feel the precise way we want to.
Some customs and rituals (ideas of convenience if you ask me) seem to be essential for mankind to co-habit, live simplistically or just to be akin to one another and the ritual of burial, I believe is one.
The concept of believing in the afterlife is not a ritual or a custom yet it is a deep set view in most religions - yet where certain rites of passage are expected it still manages to be a personal choice. Christian faith tells us that our souls are converted into angels as we ascend to heaven but then the conflicting interest I have is that how can one choose whether our soul is converted or not as the same religion quotes: God made angels before the onset of civilisation and saints are the product of Gods followers who have taken his word as prayer and final. How very apt that the option of being a God fearing citizen can lead us into something more pleasurable than an orgasm and twice as nice as a big, fat cream cake or a prime steak with a beautiful woman and a tankard of the best ale. It does derive from religion in part but also esotericisim and from a metaphysical view and we have given it names; the Hereafter, Life after death and of course the Afterlife. It is without concrete proof we toy with the idea but then we have no proof of a god, of any god - that again is something that is personal and only relevant to those of us who have need for it in our lives but millions upon millions of humans worship a god of some kind. Follow the book (s) and adhere to particular way of life as set out in their personal religious choice. I do not have too much interest in different belief systems but if I were asked to choose a set from a religious angle then I would opt for a sprinkling of Paganism and a touch of Mr Buddha but then is that because as a reformed 'bad girl' I can now look towards a hereafter that is good and pure as opposed to one I may have had if I was still the devil on my own shoulder? The word I have utilised so much springs to my occasionally random mind; convenient! We as a whole can choose which belief shop we buy from like purchasing a frock or a bowler hat because we have the choice to tailor ourselves to whatever nicely fitting concern-relieving antidote we want. I have no interest further than this as I said the proof may make me or break me on the actual truth. But the afterlife is not a collective as religion is: it is purely something we endeavour to look to for simple comfort in our grief.
When I die I will return as an eagle............