Prose Poem: Closing Night

When she took her final bow, the lights dimmed to a crimson black.  Her friends and family couldn’t let the curtain fall; they screamed and cried into the darkness until she left them.

All they had to do was go home.

But they regarded the solemn tears on their cheeks; salt burning the very moment of her end, into their flesh.  They waited for the silence to subside, a third act, an encore, something signaling that this moment wasn’t real.

The passionate performance was over.  Life couldn’t have filled a theater more gracefully than the aura of that woman. But death, like always, will fill the room in the end.

I hate watching my friends grieve.  I don’t understand;  I haven’t lost one of my close family members.  I have four grandparents still alive.  But I have lost three “secondary” members of my family: one cat and two dogs.  Death surrounds me, my friends.  Yet there’s nothing I can say, and nothing I can do to truly console them.  Death is a part of life, no one can escape departure from their human body; tis a fate we all must face.

We ought to challenge our views of death- eliminate our fear ending and the pain of loss.  How did people before the modern era handle death?  Nowadays, we expect our doctors to save us from our illnesses, from death; and they often do.  In past times the common cold could kill you, and childbirth seemed less miraculous because you may loose and gain a family member at the same time.   How could you lose someone you love so frequently? How did they handle death?

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