If you had asked her how she thought she would die back when she had been alive, she would probably tell you she would meet her end by way of her untrustworthy vehicle hugging a highway median in a speedy and lethal embrace, or perhaps that one day she would grow weary of Murphy's Law dictating her every move in life, and would bid this unjust world farewell; 

leaving only a tipped chair and swinging heels as her last grand gesture before the final curtain fell. 

She'd no doubt punctuate the statement with a wry smile and slight laugh, and you'd be left feeling slightly unsettled and then nervous for her wellbeing, even as you chuckled along with her. 

But for all the made up scenarios she could have told you, she would've never guessed that her demise would ultimately be met by way of accident in the tiny rented bedroom of a house she hated living in.

"I feel like a ghost here. They're barely aware of my presence at all. Maybe I prick their ears with the sound of a closing door, or the muted padding of my footfalls to the bathroom or kitchen turns their heads slightly. Who knows. I think I'm forgotten as soon as that moment ends, though"

A particularly sleepless night, losing count of the sleeping pills entering her mouth as the hours dragged on. Plucking her eyebrows to the soundtrack of her favorite video game; tinny noises playing through the speakers of her laptop, passing the time. 

Two here, three there. Now two more because it's been about an hour and she works in the morning. 

And so the fateful night went.

I suppose if she surveyed the situation now, she would be sorely disappointed. 

"For all the nights- heck, all the DAYS- I spent willing my life to end in the worst possible way, wishing my body could at least spare a few tears to make me feel alive...and I die because I wanted to sleep? What a waste. Even in death, I was cheated" 

It took them 3 days to find her. 

The scene was strangely normal for all the turmoil she'd so often confided in me to be in. Turns out, she put herself through much more in life than was actually necessary to bring her to death's doorstep. 

Her phone was left unchecked on the charging port, alarm still persistently reminding her to get ready for work; countless social media notifications pockmarked the screen with bright red.

Her room was an eyesore and a mess: diet pills and piles of unopened bills collected dust together on a cluttered dresser top. Beauty products lay strewn across every surface, including the floor. Cardboard moving boxes with words like "Christmas Ornaments" scrawled on the side held dirty dishes, on the other side of the room, fruit flies congregated atop a pile of old food left abandoned on a paper plate.

Then there was her. 

Laying on her stomach in bed, a single sheet draped over the lower half of her eerily still form. Face to the side, head cradled on a mascara stained pillow with no pillowcase. She could pass for sleeping if you didn't already know.

In death, she looked neither serene nor troubled. Just lifeless. 

Near her head on the nightstand, sat the fateful empty bottle of sleeping pills and a glass of water which mere days ago, had held the liquid that would ultimately wash down her last meal.

Death by diphenhydramine. 

"Good grief, what a silly way to go. I could write a story about that, you know"

Even now, I swear I can hear her voice in my ear. Laughing at me, correcting my grammar, telling me to lighten up as I write this. 

God, I wish you could've known her. 

I would give anything just to once more see the way her cheeks flushed when you complimented her, or how her eyes could hold so much obvious pain, yet her mouth could defy its existence and you'd somehow believe her when she said she was okay.

I never had the chance to see her happy; really, truly happy, and that has plagued me with tremendous guilt since I first got the call from her distressed parents.

I don't know if she would've taken her life by choice. I don't know that. I can't know that.

I know she spoke of it with an unnerving amount of frequency, but I always believed that the fire inside her burned just enough to keep her moving forward despite the misery she showed me, yet hid from the rest of the world.

Whenever the flames dimmed and only faint, glowing embers remained, I had made sure I was always there to softly breathe life into them, and sooner or later she'd find her resolve to keep going. 

But in the end, it only took a moment of my absence on an otherwise normal night, for a strong gust of wind to extinguish her flame completely. 

To smother out the delicate existence I had all but dedicated myself to preserving. 

The only thing I know with complete and unwavering certainty, is that night, the world was robbed of someone who had greatness in them that could have led revolutions. 

Yet she had tricked herself into believing she was worthless- 

"merely a cosmic dust bunny under the bed of this vast universe",

-and I think it finally caught up with her. 

All that untapped potential now lies buried under 6 feet of dirt in a stupid wooden box. She didn't deserve a box; she deserved the world and I failed to give it to her. 

Now I mourn that a man will never know what it is to love her, and a small handful of women will never get to experience what it really meant to call her 'friend'. 

She was so fierce and passionate about the real things in life- past all the bullshit and facades- she knew what was worth her love, and would do anything for those select few she held dear, even at the expense of her own wellbeing.

I can't make any more memories with her. I only have what she left me with, and although I've tried to keep them fresh in my mind, the years pass and I start to wonder what was reality and what is now merely fabrication of my experiences with her.

A feeble attempt by my aging mind to add years onto a life that was cut so short by the most unfortunate and preventable of circumstances.

So much time has passed, but some nights she still visits me in my dreams, and we just talk. Trying desperately to make up for the lost years she should've spent by my side in one night.

When I wake from those dreams, my pillow is damp and my throat constricts painfully as I come to realize I'm still alone, and she's still gone. 

There are so many unknowns, even all this time later.

Questions that will never have answers. 

It took a lot of years for me to come to terms with knowing that and also being okay with it. 

She was always something of a mystery, and the way she left me only further served to prove that there really was no figuring her out. 

I only know I miss her every day. 

"I'm tired of people trying to somehow solve me. You know, figure me out as if I'm a Rubik's cube or a math problem. You don't ask where the wind comes from and why it does what it does. You simply let it cool your face on a hot summer day, or admire how it bends the stalks of flowers and makes the leaves of the mightiest trees tremble at its touch. 

I am the wind" 

G. Bosquez 

6/13/2015 

3:03 AM

Standing at an empty grave, I pondered, who was it's intended?

Six feet down, covered in flowers, through the night I have defended.

Waiting on a family train to arrive with their fallen guest,

Time ticks on, no break in site, I stand watch to complete my quest.

Hours through an endless night, now daylight extends my grief...

I face the hole, and curse my soul, for a moment of relief'....

My solitary justification for loving you was convincing myself I could actually survive in the secret fantasy world we had invented,

whispering dreams of grand escapes between sips of sweet wine and committing to memory the soft outline of your smile as we kissed,

Melting anxieties of the harsh world outside (that very same one waiting patiently on our doorstep) 

Naively ignoring that I was clutching to you with white knuckles and my grip was ever slipping,

Trying desperately to hold tightly to someone I knew I could never fully have; forever swinging perilously over a frothy, churning sea of jealousy

Yet when you held me, the raging storm fell mute; a faulty sense of clarity befell star crossed eyes bearing rose flushed glasses,

and in that frozen frame of time, I truly believed you were the only salve to mend open wounds and repair the damage inflicted by those before you,

No lofty commitments to doubt,
no heavy promises to halt this deadly dance we gladly swayed in time to,

just a pair of damaged humans with deep tears in their stuffing;
pasting patches forged from a strangers comfort over fractured souls in hope of healing,

Trembling fingers weaving taut stitching of raw, pink scars,

pulling together two broken lives and blindly believing it would hold.
"

G. Bosquez
3/20/2015

Griefstricken 

She was an atheist. After

her beloved husband died

she began drinking heavily

.... her grief multiplied by

the thought that he no longer

existed at all.  God show

her that he still IS, that he

will love her forever, and that

he is happy.

-saiom shriver-

http://www.thenashvillefoodproject.org/newsite/wp-content/uploads/choose-JOY.jpg

I miss you dad
More and more each day
I'm trying my best
To get up and stay
To be a part of this world
With all it's ups and downs
To wear a smile more
Than I wear I frown
It's harder than I thought it would be
Living without you
What are you trying to tell me?
I feel confused at night
When I dream of your smile
Knowing that you're gone now
For more than a little while
Why is the question
Because is the only answer
Why does my heart bleed
Because you are not there.

Brandy Noelle Souza

11/4/2014

Grieving is about loss. Most people think of the grief process and right away think about death, and it is so "not" about death, but because we do not understand what death is, and only base our knowledge of death on everything we have been told second hand about it, our grief becomes something we "adjust ourselves to". It becomes for some, a burden they carry, and for others, another phase of growth and acceptance of our inability to "know everything".

Grief of anything other than death is much more tangible to work through. "I lost my house". Ok, so now I must find another place to shelter myself. "I lost my wallet". Ok. So now I have take the necessary steps to retrieve and protect my information best I can. 

"I lost my beloved. He/she was the only person in the entire world who I had ever fully opened my heart to who LISTENED, and took the time and effort to CONNECT to my HEART in a way that no one else could ever, or will ever again be able to do".

Hmmm. 

Best you can do is accept your human limits maybe. People say "acceptance of death". They only confuse the real issue.

~a four year old child who lost their mother~

...

He was born in a rodent-infested hut, amid the broken screams of an abused woman and the furious shouts of a drunken man; those sounds never faded.

He had been there all his life.

He watched the generations pass by; he lived his life in each stage, under the watchful eyes of the same spirits that have always lurked there.

He is unwelcome-he interferes in the dull monotony of their lives

But he doesn’t, really-he never ventures into their existence-

Never shatters their perfect routine,

He merely peeps in from a distance, like a tourist at a zoo.

As the house burned, bright orange and red flames licking the night sky,

A boy of eight watched, a gash running down the side of his head.

That is a scar he will forever have to bear.

Holding that candle to the drapes and then quietly walking out, he wouldn’t regret

He was a murderer.

He walked out of what they called the kids’ dungeon, his gash now a pink scar,

Jagged and crooked, adorning the side of his face.

As other boys threw insults at him, he stole a brown hat with a large brim.

His painfully ordinary hat hides his cold eyes, as they observe and calculate

He is tall, but he slouches; his trusty cane always clenched tight between his white knuckles;

Some people make us instantly warm up to them, some make us shiver uncomfortably.

He is the latter.

He watched with pained eyes as his wife walked away.

The little boy on her shoulder reached back for him, crying too much to be coherent.

The people glared at him cruelly, telling him he was his own father.

He learned to shut his eyes and ears.

He is there, seemingly everywhere at once, as soon as the smiling sun makes his way up the sky;

He watches carefully as the village crawls to life,

The small shacks opening their worn down, unpolished doors, as curious, wary heads peek out at him,

Each of them turning away as he turns in their direction.

He watched in the mirror as his once youthful face grew old, like creases on thin paper;

He looked out of his window. An old lady smiled at him with sympathy.

She was the only one who had done that in a long time.

They talk about him-the women gossip during knitting sessions,

And the men make crude jokes about him as they labour in the fields.

Happy new parents warn their children fearfully, to steer clear of his mysterious figure.

That is why they scuttle away when he watches them-the same way he does everyone else.

He stared at the official document.

The old lady had died.

She left him her life’s savings.

They do not know how he survives-how he makes his living,

How he gets his food and drink,

Or is he some strange entity that does not require any mortal means of survival?

They do not know, yet, or maybe “thus”, he is the story young boys tell around the campfire,

As they shine torchlight in their faces, making sound effects to ensure their friends will wake up screaming in the still, quiet dead of night.

He signed at the bottom of the page;

He hoped someone would find it.

He gave his house and property to his son.

When his spirit fades away like morning stars, in the middle of December, his bed as cold as his eyes once were,

No one knows.

His body rots, as the family of rats, who call his house their home, 

Eagerly feast on the pale carcass.

Things come full circle.

If you could've been saved, I would've been over the moon.

But you died and you were taken far too soon.

You had to have a hysterectomy and your left leg amputated.

You were in so much pain, it was something that I truly hated.

My brother and I had to end your pain by taking you off the respirator.

If I would've had a choice, I would've rather wrestled with an alligator.

When you died, I came home and licked my wounds.

If you could've been saved, I would've been over the moon.

Things haven't been going well since Mom died one year ago today.

A big part of me died with her when she passed away.

For the last 365 days, I've been going through Hell.

Everybody who knows me, knows that things aren't going well.

One day before Mom's death, there were two things that I decided to give her.

A stuffed Easter bunny and a card and they were buried with her.

Life hasn't been easy because I've been to Hell and back.

I would've rather suffered a severe heart attack.

I've experienced a year's worth of misery and tears.

Life has been pretty bad since March of last year.

I hope that I never have to experience this kind of pain again.

I'll never forget Mom even if I live to be a hundred and ten.