Bird droppings

Too much death lately.

This weekend, a friend of mine killed himself.

I find it confusing to deal with death when the person that has died is not a close friend or relative. If one of my roommates died, or one of my close friends that I see on a regular basis died... I'd know what my reaction would be. I'd understand that I'd be overwhelmed with grief and senses of loss. I'd know that I'd want to attend funeral events and connect with friends and mourn and all that... I'd understand my place in relation to that death.

But what if the person is only someone I see every few weeks? Every few months? A few times a year? What if the last time I saw them was many years ago?

In these situations... I don't understand my grief and my relationship to that grief. I don't understand other people's reaction to my grief.

My friend that died this weekend? It has been nearly a year since I last saw him in person. But we've talked online from time to time, and I'm close to an ex of his, and talk to his wife some. We're not close at all, but he was definitely a friend.

It seems strange to me when people say that they're "sorry for my loss." My loss? He wasn't really mine to lose. He was someone else's... He belonged to a community and collection of friends and relatives and people that interacted with him for more frequently than I. I have only had minimal contact with him in comparison. I feel as though I'm simply on the sidelines of this man's life.

Yet he meant something to me. He was someone I thought fondly of. Our last interaction was an 8 hour conversation that lasted until the wee hours of the morning. I still have a text file on my desktop listing some books he recommended I read on the basis of that conversation.

I have grief. Hell... I've been listless and depressed for the past 3 days over this. I've cried over this.

But I don't get it, and I don't get what it means.

More than my own feelings, I worry about the people closer to him that he leaves behind. How they're doing. His widow. His ex. People that loved him and were with him often.

I'm going to miss him. He was a brilliant and wonderful inventor and security researcher, who did great things for this world. I weep for all of the conversations we're never going to have. I weep for those he left behind. I weep for my loss and the world's loss.

Incidentally... I've been watching a lot of TV to zone out and ignore reality for the past few days. Especially Star Trek The Next Generation. It's amazing to me how much of this stuff deals with death, but besides the simple effect of confirmation bias, I think that it is just a fact that much of human literature and media deal with this question.

What is death... How do we relate to it? What does it mean for there to be an end to *me*? To a given person's consciousness? When another dies, how do we accept the permanent changes in expectations of reality? How do we accept the fact that we will never again meet them? That we will never again interact with them... talk with them... etc.

We're all trying to figure this out and answer our questions about what it all is. And how we deal with it when it impacts our own lives.

I'm going to miss him. He was a fascinating person that I wanted to know better.

2 months ago, when I fell and broke my ankle, I lost consciousness. It was probably the second most frightening thing that has ever happened to me. I fell to the ground and felt my ability to think fading away. I couldn't control myself, and my thoughts were becoming sluggish and incoherent. I was fighting it, trying to stay conscious, trying to stay awake, but I was unable to do it. Terrified of this loss of ability to use my own mind, I fell out of the world. I started to dream of a perfect wonderful place filled with light and happiness where I was surrounded by everyone I love. Everything was perfect and wonderful. Then I slipped back into this world. Once again, I struggled to make sense of what was going on around me. I tried looking around, but my vision was blurry and fuzzy, as if I couldn't properly focus. My thoughts continued to be in a jumble. I couldn't remember where I was or what was going on or even properly contemplate my situation. A single thought escaped my terrified mind and I whispered it to whoever was around me, if anyone was around me, "Help me." Then, I fell out of the world again into that happy place.

The next time I came back to this world, I was still frightened and anxious, but I was able to hold onto consciousness. Slowly, my thoughts came back to me, and I could start thinking again. At first, I couldn't figure out where I was or why I was there, but slowly, it came to me. I realized that viesti and dana_grrl were sitting next to me, holding me and keeping me safe. I remember that I was out on a hike. I remembered that I had just fallen and lost consciousness.

Ever since that happened, I've been contemplating it a lot. Again, it was one of the most terrifying experiences in my life, slowly losing my ability to think. Feeling my own mind malfunctioning. Losing control of my own thought processes to the point where I was non-functional. In many ways, the experience resembled some version of what many people describe death like. The entity known as Joyce stopped and I was filled with a sense of well being.

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