Reincarnated Poet: Hello my freaky darlings, I haven't written anything to my Songs to the Grave series in quite some time, and looking over it I've found a bit of an oddity. Caleb is completely and totally unrepresented! This had to be fixed, there by for which this little jewel was born…or is it a pebble masquerading as a jewel. You decide.
Greatest Loss
"Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss in life is what dies inside us as we live."
~Normal Cousins
The danger's passed. Everyone's been patched up and thoroughly hugged, kisses, and scolded. We're all trying to go back to our normal lives. I'm not so sure that I can. While Pogue was being stitched up and Kate nursed back to health, my mother and I buried my father.
I'm digging the grave. Gorman offered to help. He said that he could have a crew come in. There were people whose job it was to do such things, after all. I told him no. I wanted to dig the grave. I needed to. I had to feel the wood shovel biting into my palm as splinters broke off from the force of the iron head hitting the sloshed dirt. I had to feel my feet sinking into the mud as the rain came down in sheets—as it always seemed to do.
I've gotten about a foot down now. The entire thing is seven feet long and three feet wide, larger than it really had to have been. Gorman told me something smaller, but I wanted the labor of the full sized hole. My father was a brave man. A man tall and broad in mind, if not in statue. I wouldn't put him in a small hole. I couldn't. He was my father. He was such a large part of me that…
It's two feet deep now. Mud has soaked into every inch of my clothing. I'm cold to my very bones, but not from the rain. I'm angry. I'm beyond angry. I'm…I'm…overflowing and empty at the same time. There's this swelling in my chest that seems to just move outward and leave the core empty. Like a balloon.
It's three feet deep now. My hands are bleeding but I don't really feel them. It was for me. All for me. I didn't ask him to. I didn't go and beg him to saw those damned words, but he did. He did, and it's because of me. My mother said she spoke to him, before the end. That just showing the mental clarity to say those words was a victory for him. More than he'd done in years, she'd said. I know it's true. I know.
It's four feet deep now. It's a miracle that Sarah hasn't come out here to tell me that she's leaving town. I couldn't protect her from the monster, the monster that wore my face. It wore my power. It wore my embrace and my smiles and my well wishes. It wore me, and I wore it.
It's five feet deep now. Who was I to take a life? Two lives? Was it two? My fathers and my brothers. Both to ensure my safety, the safety of those I cared about. People cared about my father. People cared about Chase. Did he have family? Did he have a lover? A mother? A father? No. He killed them. I have to keep reminding myself that he killed everything he touched. He touched me. Did he kill me? Maybe.
It's six feet deep now. I'm not sure how I'm going to climb out. The walls are steep. I dug this hole well. My father will lie in it for the rest of time and I dug it with my own hands. I've created his final resting place. I've created the place where death and he will converse for ages to come. If he hadn't done what he did, I would be dead. Pogue, Reid, Tyler, Sarah, Kate, they all would be dead. Chase would too, eventually. But I have to wonder: who really lost here? My father—a pained, middle aged man who looked to be on his death bed—or me—an eighteen year old boy who has to live with the fact that his father died for him. That there's blood on his hands, and his head, and his heart. Who really lost here? Is it death that's the ultimate sacrifice, or is it living with the death? I can't be too sure. When I die, I'll let you know.