For Every Missing Shade

Entry 45

I spent most of the next morning trying to come up with the speech for the funeral. I've always had trouble finding the one thing to talk about. I never was able to find one favorite song or my top favorite movie, but now I had to come up with one speech. One ten-minute-long timeframe to talk about everything that Emma meant to me. I didn't know how to begin thinking through what memories I should tap into or what conversations we had that I should tell to the world.

My mom called me down to breakfast and then to lunch, neither of which I was hungry for anyway. Still, one person's death doesn't stop another person's need for food, so I went anyway. I half-heartedly picked at my food while my mom and dad tried to keep the conversation light.

"Have you checked social media lately?" my mom asked.

"Uh, no. Why?" I responded.

"I've just seen a lot of very endearing posts about Emma and you're tagged in most of them."

I opened my phone and got onto the first social media app I saw. Dozens of posts were on my timeline that mentioned Emma or me.

"I don't want to see that," I said plainly as I shut off my phone.

"Honey, what's going on?" My mom asked, both concerned and irritated.

"These people are fake, their posts are fake, and I don't want to hear their shit."

"Israel!" she said again, shocked.

"No, I'm not gonna take this from them. They were all saying the same shit when she got diagnosed, but what does it matter? None of them called, none of them visited, none of them actually tried to reach out." I stood up from my chair. "But now every single person on Earth is trying to spin this story where they're somehow connected to her. They all want to imagine that they had some fairytale relationship with her, but they will move on," My voice was getting louder than I wanted. "The thing is, I won't. They send in their pictures and messages, having some competition to see who's sympathy will gain them the most popularity. Then, they go off to the next party to talk about how they know pain, and how they know what it's like to lose someone to cancer. After they're all done, though, they'll leave me in their dust. They'll move on after their posts are polished enough for the world to see and then it'll just be me at the end."

I had barely noticed that I had started crying halfway through my rant, but my mom came over and wiped a tear off my cheek once I was done.

"She's gone," I said. "She's gone and I don't know what to do."

My mom reached around me and pulled me into her embrace. "I know it's hard," she said as she rubbed my back "I don't know exactly what you're going through, but I know it sucks. I know what it's like to see other people play along with tragedy, and I know what it's like to lose someone."

"I just wish I did something wrong," I said, still wrapped in her embrace. "I wish I messed up somehow so all of this would make sense. I wish I was careless or an idiot or something else because then at least I'd have a reason for why she's gone. But she was perfect and I don't know why this had to happen."

"Israel, I'm going to tell you something and I need you to hear it," my dad said as he sat down next to me. "You're going to want to blame this on something. You're going to try to blame it on God, doctors, yourself, or any number of things that influenced your last weeks with Emma. The thing is, it's not worth it.

"There isn't anything that gives amazing people cancer just like there isn't anything that gives horrible people cancer. the universe doesn't give people cancer to kill them and doctors don't mistreat people to get home by dinner. So you can't blame it on them. The reality is, bad things happen. Period. It's not that bad things happen to good people, or that bad things happen to bad people. They just happen. I wish I could've changed that when it came to your grandma and I bet you wish you could change that because of Emma."

"But there has to be a reason," I said back. "There just has to."

"If there is, then it's not for any of us to understand. It sucks, it really does. I've been hurt by tragedy more than I would wish on anybody, but it doesn't mean that there had to be a reason behind it.

"Think about it like a plane crash," he continued. "If one person lived from it and everyone else died, then people would preach about how that one person had a purpose on this Earth and God kept him. But what does that mean God did to the other passengers? Why didn't they have a purpose too?"

"I don't know," I responded.

"That's because they did have a purpose. We all have one. Them dying in a plane crash doesn't mean that they were bad, good, strong, or weak. It meant that they were one in a few people every year who happened to die in a plane crash.

"If you're looking for something to blame, blame cancer. Blame poor genes or bad health. But whatever you do, don't blame a person, and don't blame a god."

"Did you blame something after grandma?"

"Yes, two people as a matter of fact. I blamed your grandfather and I blamed God. I thought my dad wasn't doing enough to get her the care she needed and I thought God just didn't care. Both of those relationships were destroyed for a while, and I regret every second that I pinned something that horrible on someone who wasn't responsible for it."

I hung my head as my mom continued to rub my back. My mind stopped trying to make sense of everything and, for the first time in a long time, felt stable.

I gave them both a hug and walked back upstairs. I drew the blinds and sat at my desk, got out a fresh notebook, and started writing. New ideas popped into my head as old ones flickered out, and after an hour I had more than ten different introductions written.

I kept going, using idea after idea. I wrote through dinner and into the small hours of the morning. I kept trying to figure out what to write, but nothing ever seemed to stick. I kept trying to come up with new ideas, but my mind eventually couldn't take it anymore. I sat back from my desk and realized that I was exhausted.

Too tired to do anything more, I gathered up all of my materials from my desk, put them away, and got ready for bed. As soon as my head hit the pillow, my dreams took the front seat as I drifted away from reality.