This is a very personal piece I wrote last night. A friend of mine recently passed on, and her funeral is today. I just want you to know that this was written for me, not for you guys, and this is just my way with dealing with things. Feel free to review if you want to, but I won't be looking for responses for this.
You cannot breathe as the call comes through the com, bringing an end to your world. Your Master is dead. Four words said without pity, remorse, or any true realization of what the man they're talking about was, what he meant to you. You stand in shock, holding the com far away from you as though the physical distance can negate that damning sentence.
"W-what?" you whisper. You know the man on the com won't be able to hear, but you don't care. The one, stuttered word was an expression of your shock, your numbness. Slowly realization breaks through. Your Master is dead. Your Master is dead. Your Master is dead. No matter how you say it, what inflection you put on that one sentence that is your capital punishment, the world remains silent. Inside you there is an ache.
Your heart is not breaking like the books always claimed. Instead it is peeling away like the layers of an onion, but this is no onion. An onion would make you cry, and you cannot shed a tear for the man you considered a father. That seems wrong.He would cry for you, you know it, but somehow grief has so transfixed you that you can only stare at the com and wait, though you are unsure what for. An apocalypse, perhaps. Surely the world must end now that your Master's life has. It would be blasphemy any other way.
Trembling, still staring, you collapse onto your bed. It's all too big to comprehend. First your father, then your best friend, then finally your brother are struck down in the unholy depths of your imagination as you watch your Master's death over… and over… and over again. Ever so slightly your inner gaze shifts toward self-blame. It makes no sense, intellectually, but you can't help but think that if you had known sooner, that if there had been one more person sending prayers relentlessly into the cold, unrelenting Force, your Master might have lived. Suddenly you hear a knock at your door.
"Come in," you call out, trying to sound as normal as possible. The door slides open and Master Yoda hobbles in.
"Felt your pain, I did," he says. "Know you were close, I do. A terrible loss this is, both to you and the Order."
"I don't know," you say. "It's just all so sudden."
"Hmm," says Yoda. "Yes. Still in shock, you are. Comprehend this you cannot." You let out the breath you didn't know you were holding. Yoda understands, at least partially.
"It's hard to understand," you say. "I only saw him, what, five days ago? Last Friday. He was fine then."
"Yes, yes. Fine he was then, and fine you will soon be. Soon, yes, soon." You snort.
"I doubt that," you say, and you mean it. Even now layers are endlessly being torn from your onion heart. Everywhere you look, everything you see, it all echoes of him. Every word you say, every sentence, you almost pause to hear his reprimand for such dour thinking. Even though it hurts worst that anything, you don't want the ghosts of him to leave. Beside you Yoda looks on with compassion in his eyes, seeming to know all the thoughts flitting around your head.
"In pain you are," he whispers, and then he gets up. "Leave you now I must, but come to me, you may, if need to talk you do. Soon, soon pass the pain will. Slowly fill you will, and whole you will be again. Soon, yes, very soon."
Yoda was right.
