A Curation of Randomness

A

A man died recently. Let us call him ‘C’. I did not know him in life, not even his name. But when he died, I read people write about his dying and his living. He seemed like a truly colourful person, the type to paint light into people and things.

I knew him through their collective grief.

B

I am the kind of man to romanticize words that linger. Of recent, it has been a portion of an essay by Tolu Daniel where he wrote ‘ Isn’t grief supposed to be personal? A woman loses her husband, some children lose their father, and the first thought that hits us is that they must perform their grief to people…’

Later that night, I scribbled in my journal something about how life is a stage and how we are all performers.

But how does one perform death?

C

Would I have known C if his friends didn't share parts of him in grief?

I spent a long time wondering how people will come to know me in grief. How the bundle, the summation of my existence will become immaterial in comparison to bits or parts of me that will be shared to people I do not know.

D

There are days I find myself living outside my own body. On days like that, I realize that inertia is the ultimate curse.

E

We slow-danced in the darkness, hands intertwined sometimes. There was no awkwardness, no laughing at my occasional missing of a step, no desire, no pangs of lust to fill, just the sound of music and darkness, waiting on us, watching us.