It was kind of funny, I thought. Not funny haha but funny sad and distressing. This whole death thing wasn't what it was cracked up to be.
Unlike what I thought you don't magically get all the answers once you die. Maybe I was stuck on earth because of the nature of my death, senseless violence. I wasn't ready to go. I didn't think I would go. I had that young person's sort of thought that I wouldn't die. Boy, was I wrong.
And there was the things left undone, the things I didn't get to do thing. The list was long and pretty depressing but let's go over it, shall we? Why not? I've got eternity. So I didn't get to graduate from high school, I didn't get to go to college, I didn't get to get married, I didn't get to have another child, one I could have been a real father to. I didn't even get to legally buy alcohol or sit at a bar or dig an olive out of the bottom of a triangle shaped martini glass.
There were a lot of other things, things I really might have done but didn't because I was murdered. I didn't get to graduate college, find a career, maybe find some professional fulfillment in something. I didn't get to grow old with someone. I never got to travel. Never got to tell Liberty how I really felt. I have to think she knew. Maybe Toby told her. I hope so.
I usually hang around Liberty. I can see her and sometimes I can hear her, but it's funny. It's like there's this film or membrane between her and me, it's not like I'm right there like Casper or something. I'm sort of there, and I can sort of see her but it's more like a feel of her. I know I'm near Liberty because of her energy or her aura or something. That's the same over here as it was there, and it's kind of funny again because I didn't realize how it was, how she was when I was alive, not really. I guess I just didn't think about it. Over here I know what it was I knew when I was around her, if that makes sense. Maybe it doesn't. Sorry.
Sometimes I hang around Toby. Toby was sad about me. He was in this sort of a despair, different from Liberty. Liberty was kind of moving on. She missed me, I know she did. But she was not sick with despair over me. Toby was clinging to me in a way. And he looked older, when I glimpsed him clear. So much older. I wasn't his first friend to die rather tragically.
Then sometimes I'd hang around my grandmother, inscrutable woman. She went about her strange little routine of watering plants and taking walks and crocheting things and cooking and cleaning and watching certain T.V. shows but only certain ones. And when I was near her and would sit on her lap in the rocking chair like I did when I was little she'd think about me, remember nice things and smile a bitter little smile.
I could see my mother kneeling on my grave, the sobs wrenching her. I could see my father, bum that he was, gambling in dark casinos with no clocks, the only thing that told the passage of time was the rhythmic clink of the handles on the slot machines. He must know that I was dead. Maybe. But I wasn't sure because no one talked to him and if he didn't read it in the paper well then he wouldn't know. When I was near him a troubled look came across his face, a blank stare, a twitching of one eye. Some part of him knew I was around.
And back to Liberty. I loved Liberty when I died. Maybe that meant I would love her for all eternity, and I'd try not to be jealous if she found someone else to love. I wanted her to. I wanted her to have the life she wanted, one she could feel good being in. I wanted her dreams to come true. Of course I wouldn't mind if she thought of me once in a while, maybe talked to me. She didn't do that all that often but Toby did. Sometimes he talked to me more now than he did when I was alive. Funny. Kind of funny haha and funny sad. So much was like that.
Like James Dean I would stay young forever, and I already felt them leaving me behind. I'd become farther and farther removed from their age and their present time. Soon I'd become just someone they knew when. When they were in high school. When they were 17. When they went to Degrassi. I'd be trapped by all these contingencies on my existence. So be it. Nothing I could really do.
So, uh, yeah. My death was a murder, that's pretty bad. It's scary. It wasn't my time or I don't think it was. Maybe I'd have to deal with it, with the violence and the suddenness of it all. Work through it. Make a certain sort of peace with it. Forgive some people, including myself. I wasn't anywhere near there yet. I liked drifting around sometimes, looking into Liberty's eyes, wondering what she could see.