Taken - Naming & Shaming the Guilty

 

I hate how we talk about death like it is not guilty and responsible for the things that it has committed. We speak of it like it is absent and guiltless, a phenomena that exists but can't be touched.

We blame the person, their habits, the system, the people, the things, even time gets a hit, but we never blame death. We talk about it like it isn't there in the midst of the conversation looking lovingly at who it takes next or the watching angrily at the one who got away. We go round and round in circles seeking explanations from whatever it is that we can find, but we never hold death itself responsible for its actions and the resulting consequences.

But what exactly do we hold?

The same emptiness and void that ceases not just a person's life, but their very existence - their smell, their touch, their presence, them. So bad that you see their body but it's not them. You touch them but it's no longer them. The same destroyer that works with time to slowly remove their fragments from the earth - their belongings scattered around the world amongst those who love them and want mementos, those who saw a free opportunity to own something they've always wanted or just want, and those who will never know it belonged to them. And then their essence - we forget their voices, how it broke when they were getting emotional, their nuances, their values, how they existed, and slowly we start to forget their faces and no matter how long we fight, we just end up forgetting.

But we still don't blame death. We blame every other thing for their removal, even God. We forget that even he tells us "The last enemy that shall be destroyed is death". He calls it by the name that it should be called - an enemy.

So maybe when it takes from you, you will realize it as the enemy and not shield it in an attempt to explain it away. Knowing that regardless of the taken's doing or undoing, the enemy took them.