for someone who’s seen plenty of dead bodies, unsolicited and unprepared, it is disturbingly strange that i don’t get to see the corpses of the people who truly mattered to me.

first, it was my dad. after being away for almost a year, i got the news he was gone. i wasn’t given the chance to take one last look at him, even if it was at his lifeless body. and god, i wanted to.

now it’s my best friend. he was flown back to his home country and is being buried today, and still, i can’t see him. not even what’s left of him.

it’s starting to feel like a curse, this backwards relationship with death. the universe keeps forcing me to witness strangers in their final state, accident scenes, medical emergencies, the random violence of the world, searing their faces into memory whether i want them there or not.

but when death takes someone i love, when i need that final moment of recognition, that chance to see the reality and maybe find some way to let go, suddenly there are protocols and distances and other people’s decisions standing in the way.

it’s as if death itself is mocking me: here, have this trauma you never asked for, but the closure you desperately need? that’s off limits.

i don’t know if the image of their lifeless bodies would ease my grief or deepen it, but that choice should have been mine to make. twice now, it’s been taken from me.

and so i’m left with nothing but my memory of them alive, while my head stays crowded with strangers who meant nothing to me, who i couldn’t save, who i never chose to see.