Yes, it has occurred to me
That I haven't been able to look at a recent photograph of him since he died.
Eight months now,
Ashes to ashes, and whatnot.
He wasn't in them, anyway,
The photographs.
He was always something else somewhere else.
It was never enough
To take the photo and point and say
This is him.
Because it wasn't.
It has occurred to me that I do not know how to mourn.
None of us ever did.
Or they tried and did it wrong,
Too much, too soon
And it felt fake or forced or performative.
No one alive knew him the way I knew him.
No one alive could miss him the way I missed him.
His children, my father and aunt,
They never got the best of him
And he never told them how much he regretted that.
That information was for me alone.
Me. Who knew him. The best him.
Maybe they feel that way, too.
Some of us were invited to the funeral
And some of us found out he died through the grapevine.
It seemed arbitrary and spiteful, the guest list,
And it probably was.
The woman he spent his last years with made out like a king
With the lion's share of his material possessions
And the knowledge that she successfully alienated him from most of us.
I've said before that abuse is a quiet thing
But there was nothing quiet about the sobs that clawed forth from me when he suddenly stopped calling.
I don't know how to organize all of these conflicting feelings into a coffin-sized folder in my mind.
None of us know what to do
With the pieces of himself he dropped on us and left hanging.
There's no clean way to bury this kind of confusion.
And AI isn't programmed to tell me to give up trying.
I was lost, I don't know for how long,
And the vultures stepped in to claim the pain
That I could not vocalize from thousands of miles away.
The indignation of being spoken over by those who never really loved him.
It's for the best I didn't go.
It wouldn't do to travel to the US these days just to have a fistfight.
I don't think the authorities would truly understand.
I don't think any of us really did.
I'm told my mother managed tears during her speech at the funeral.
She never should have even been there.
An ex-daughter-in-law whose only interests were the money
Had no place feigning grief over his death.
Had I been there I might have dragged her out myself–
We're better for it, that I wasn't.
At least now I can still make smalltalk with her over a table,
The width of which spans oceans and silences,
Initiated by both of us,
That spell out a lesson
That says
That neither party will ever understand or accept the other.
But this isn't about us.
I am so sick of their noise,
Their rehearsed grief,
With its hands over the send button
Of an email with a lawyer's signature
Claiming no one ever loved him like they loved him.
I am tired.
I am so tired of trying to be understood by those who only speak in terms of gains.
I am tired of being resented for my closeness to him
And I will not participate in their performances.
Theirs is not my show and I will be damned if I allow myself to lend credence to their performance with my presence.
I survived his death without them and I will continue my life in the same fashion.
