You didn't ask but I'll say it anyway.

Death is not foreign.

It is not an alien concept.

My own; perhaps an abstract and wholly incomprehensible idea.

I won't even know it when I experience it because, you know, conditions apply (I could be Jesus, we can't know for sure, YOU could be Jesus for all we know! Second coming and all that. If you know, you know 🤷🏽‍♀️)

It's not like other experiences that you can learn from; unless there's a transition and transformation involved in the process that most of us don't know about.

I say most because we all know there are people out there who claim to know things.

I'm Jon Snow.

I know nuthin'.

The pandemic didn't bring death and all its jazz to the forefront; death, in my mind, has been firmly attached to life ever since I was a child.

I think of it at least once a day.

Mostly my own.

Nothing suicidal so please don't stress out.

Just your everyday hows and what ifs and could bes ( I know that's not a word).

Scenarios play out in my mind.

I know I probably won't have the luxury of regrets because I'll be dead but I do think about the possibilities in the lives of those I leave behind.

Because loss is hard you know.

Yes, you do know.

Don't we all?

Blessed are those who have not lost for their bubble shall be burst before they are ready.

Not from the Bible.

Duh.

We are never ready.

Nor can we be.

It is too complex.

Even if we think we are tough cookies, we can crumble when we least expect it.

The news doesn't help. 

It never did.

What the pandemic did, however, was attach the possibility (dare I say probability) of another's mortality by a fragile thread to my own.

Now, that thought is mortifying.

Responsible for the life of a fellow human being whether you like it or not.

Ideally, pandemic or no pandemic we should feel responsible for the lives and rights of our fellow beings.

Having said that.

These new conditions..

HUGE responsibility.

We didn't ask for it.

It's a test.

That a lot of us are failing publicly.

Death at your door in a new and different disguise.

We're all on the bus to hell and the driver changes from time to time, depending on whom it is that gives zero fucks about the lives of others at the time.

Damn.

What a way to go; so many more people added to the "No Closure for Us" Club.

Because death is always hardest on the ones left behind.

At least as far as we, in the land of the living, know.