Funerals serve to target, with diabolical precision, a dart that lances the boil of grief, allowing it to flow out gently and smoothly, like an IV drip for the sick. They hydrate those left on the shore of the living, offering the comfort of still being, in a way, with the departed, but at the same time, they remind them of their absence… It is difficult not to relish and loathe them simultaneously. Loss alters the entire layout of the living, for they see the imprint of the dead everywhere; some rooms are adorned with flowers that never were before… The dead impose a prism on the living, who see them in places they have never set foot in. Mental imagery allows us to remember and imagine, frantically intertwining the threads of one with the threads of the other in a wild, intoxicating, and breathless dance until we are no longer able to distinguish what is true from what we invent. Time does nothing to change this, or rather, it weaves this confusion together. But do we still want to separate memory from imagination?
We do not mourn someone, it is mourning that shapes us, it is the loss of a loved one that molds us.
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