The first funeral was held in a garden. There was discussion regarding the dispropriety of having an ecclesiastical funeral outside of the church, but in life the deceased had been of sunshine and fresh air, and in death they would not be misremembered by a funeral unbefitting of their spirit. 

 

You, of course, found this hysterical. They were dead. What did it matter whether or not they would have been happy, when said happiness was not only entirely theoretical but entirely impossible. Nonetheless you attended, watching as the procession carried on late past sunset, and lingered far beyond the time many would’ve considered sensible. You didn’t know it then, but it would be the first of many nights spent in empty intention and mindless silence.

True to this, nighttide was oftentime accompanied by an inordinate compulsion for solitude, such that you reluctantly indulged in the form of a terse walk to the cemetery in which the procession had concluded. You stood before the grave you’d thus far been treating as a lodestar, a none too specific goal that had given you direction as you’d walked, and regarded it scornfully. You remained stoically unimpressed by the lackluster presence of stone upon earth, lovingly carved with words intended to encompass the totality of the life that lay sepulchred beneath.

What breathtaking arrogance.

You turned sharply away. Disillusioned, or perhaps confronted with the reality you’d merely feigned ignorance towards, you couldn’t help but feel alienated. Foreign to the dirt beneath your shoes, the vegetation taken root throughout the graveyard, the urban landscape that both surrounded and incorporated the place you’d naively sought solace in. The realization that you’d come here looking for them was a stark one, and the realization that they weren’t here because they weren’t anywhere glazed your vision with unshed tears.

You allowed your gaze to drift to the sky and the feeling dimmed. It was a diaphanous night, and the city's light pollution was no competition for the stars above. Gradually made aware of the bone deep exhaustion that had infiltrated your previous exigency of movement, you let your legs fold beneath you, kneeling and laying back against the grave. The wind was gentle through your hair, ghosting strands into your face as you blinked them away. Surveying the tranquil skies, it was easy not to acknowledge the dissimulation of your equanimity.
 

Eventually the dissimulation would fade, if solely because a lifetime of funerals would be nothing if not elucidating.
-
Time heals all wounds. So you’ve been told. This is not disproven by your current disposition. Your thoughts circle glacially, not unlike the frigid waters that bite at your desensitized skin. The lethargy isn’t a result of physical incapacitation so much as a careless serenity you allow yourself to wallow in. To anyone observing, if anyone might be bothered, it might seem like you’ve... recovered. ‘Healed,’ so to speak. Once, you had allowed
yourself to believe so as well.

 

But memory is a cruel thing. It deems itself generous: It grants you the power to bring back the people who have passed, over and over, but you are trapped in the present, and remembrance is nothing but an echo of what you have lost. In truth, grief comes quietly. Inexorably. It is intrinsically interwoven with the death that surrounds you now, because no matter the tens of thousands that die everyday there are billions still alive to suffer their loss.
 

And that loss is infinite. Like the sword of Damocles it hangs over your head, always in the peripheral of your vision, always in the back of your mind, so that no matter what new love you find you may never fully linger nor rest.
 

So once more, time heals all wounds. Go find peace now, knowing that a life that beats you down must wound you perpetually. Knowing that if you are in a constant state of injury, you are in a constant state of healing, and are therefore never fully healed.
-
In some versions of the story behind the stars, Corvus was messenger to the god of light. Apollo, recurrently taken by yet another fascination with a paramour, had sent Corvus to spy on his new love, Coronis. When the white corvid had returned from its assignment, it had apprised Apollo of Coronis’s own lascivious manners and sent the god into an affronted rage. In his anger, he burned the bird to death, turning its once white feathers into the inky black that crows and ravens would forever be cursed with.
 

This variation of the myth, as it had concluded deftly and with finality, was not a sliver as interesting as the first. This was in spite of— or perhaps because of—your unwilling lament for Corvus’s death, as the bird had been nothing but a captive audience to its own ineluctable fate.
-
Your eyes burn with salt water, the same sensation steadily searing throughout your chest. Your vision distorts not with tears but with brine. Weren’t above the surface before? Oh well, it doesn’t matter... The stars are just as pretty from here, their rays distorted and bevelled by wind whipped waves. You can longer make out the constellations through the refracting light, can no longer recall their tales, yet you find yourself in a state of tranquil ataraxy. A rhythmic beat echoing through your skull apprises you of the sepulchrous slowing of your pulse.
 

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust. Your thoughts scatter like cinders burning away. The cold has pleasantly dissipated into nihility, soon followed by the raw burning in your lungs. You’d doubt your senses if you had the consciousness left for it. Then again, if you’d had the consciousness left for it you’d be nothing but relieved. How long were you wandering just like this? Weightless, hollow, hardly even enduring life: just... observing as it passed. You were underwater for what felt like myriads, but now? Now that the water engulfing you is corporeal, and tangible not just within the ambit of your mind?

It’s exactly the same. That’s it then. You don’t find within yourself the slightest bit of regret, the melancholy reserved for such a momentous occasion. There’s desolation, certainly, but that’s always there. After all, grief is derived from the loss of something worth keeping. And a life of bereavement is not a life mourned.