Dear Ellen,
I am sending this to you even though every word I’ll put down is a symbol of how far you are from me. I am sitting on my bed (ours, if you were here) with the lights dimmed and all I can hear is the sound of my keyboard and the yuletide songs in the background. Auld Lang Syne is now playing and it sends shivers down my spine, never failing to transport me to an imaginary winter wonderland. I wonder: Do you have Christmas in your world? If you do, do you also celebrate it on the 25th day of the last month of the year? Is it cold? Hot?

I have never even seen you to begin with. I have only felt your presence and spirit whenever Mom and Dad would talk about you and how tiny you were when your heart ceased. We often bring flowers and candles to your grave, hoping that the flames infused with our prayers emanating a mesmerizing grace and scent, would send you peace and serenity, wherever you are. When I stand in front of you, watching your name beautifully etched on the tombstone, goose bumps play and linger all over my body. I can’t help but be flooded with questions: What would have been your fears, dreams, and hopes? How would you have reacted in the face of bullies? Would you have liked Photography? Fashion? Beauty? Medicine? Architecture? I don’t know. And I will never know.

As I type these words, I envision myself in an open space where a colony of polychromatic butterflies flutter over the horizon, greeting flowers whose radiance and glow are too bright for human eyes. I imagine picking out a lost, broken flower on the ground and placing it on the wings of one of the female butterflies, hoping she sends it to you, that you may be able to smell and discern the perfume of the soul longing for a sister who should’ve been by his side to witness the glorious messes of this world.

Sometimes I get angry, not because you left us, but because death was inevitable, ruthless, and vicious. How could it take you when you hadn’t even glimpsed this world? How could it take you when all you did was grow inside the person whose love for you encompasses and surpasses everything? How could it take you when it could’ve chosen someone else more deserving? And lastly, how could it take the DNA of the person whose genes form a part of me? These are the questions I find myself repeating over and over. You were too pure, too innocent to be taken away.

But maybe I’m wrong. Maybe death has a purpose and meaning. I’d like to think it took you away because it wanted to save you from worldly pain, from the potential dangers every live human being has to face. That it didn’t want you to be bullied by ignorant and stupid people, or inhale the poisonous gases that plague our atmosphere. That it didn’t want you to hurt yourself when demons frolicked inside your brain, or witness you crying from the frustration of being unable to reach your lofty dreams. If these were death’s intentions, then I gladly shake hands with it and hug it tightly.

You may be asking why after all these years I am talking to you only now. I really don’t have any concrete answers. The decision came as a surprise for me. Maybe I was too petrified to start writing, too scared to know what the end of the sentence would be. Maybe I was afraid that if I wrote too much I would be sobbing, that I was going to say things I haven’t even opened up to anyone else about. Maybe I was terrified by the idea of talking to a dead person and by the possibility of what I might discover about myself. And maybe, too, I was afraid to accept that you were dead, lifeless… and I didn’t even get to do something about it.

But now I am not afraid anymore. I want to get to know you more. Your stories. Your experiences on the other side. Everything. I want to know the side of you when you get mad or depressed. I want to know how you felt as you rose above and left your physical body. I want to know how you felt seeing your body inside a coffin, unable to open it. I want to know what it was like to have grown inside Mommy’s tummy for several months only to realize you weren’t going to make it. I want to know how it felt to be so small, so helpless, so utterly at the mercy of outside forces. I want to know how it feels to be watching over the living and realizing you could have been a part of this too. I want to know the feeling of being prayed over by the living. I want to know how it feels to open your eyes every day knowing that every day spent in the skies could have been a day with your loved ones on the earthly plane. I want to know how it feels to be surrounded by dead people. I want to know the answers to these questions but I know you won’t be able to answer me. Talking to you as I am doing now, I feel that you and other souls are with us, wanting to help us understand what lies beyond life. You wait for us to make that important decision, to start the quest for the deep unknown.

I have always loved you and will always do. I am willing to shed all my tears and blood if that’s what it takes to bring you back to life. But I also know that you are in a peaceful slumber now, and no one, not even me, can disturb you.

Your death has created a white cryptic noise all over the place. Perhaps it will always be that way. The noise symbolizes how you ceased to be around us, but how you are still here, your essence flickering and touching the innermost part of our souls. It represents the memories that could have been shared, the gifts that could have been exchanged, and the feelings that could have been cherished and nurtured.

Always and forever,

Joshua

“Death is not the greatest loss in life. The greatest loss is what dies inside us while we live.”

Dear Ellen,
The afterlife, as I have come to believe my dearest Sister, is just a symmetrical, parallel universe that lives and stays invisible beside us. It is trillions and trillions of light-years away from life but through our ever-present potpourri of emotions we can sense and feel it trickling through our veins. In one of the trips I have gone with our family, we went to a place (I can’t remember if it was a park, shop, or restaurant) where I saw a reindeer’s head hung inside as a décor. I was not frightened by the reindeer, even with its antlers, but by the taxidermy done on a being that is now in the heavens and beyond, who could have lived a happy ending frolicking under the sun, united with its friends and family. Taken away merely to be displayed for visitors from all over the world, stuck in time, place, and history; how cruel. A death forced to perpetually live on. To die then is to have no control over anything, to surrender completely to whatever anyone might want to do to your body.

I don’t get why we are so terrified of death, like it’s the worst thing that can happen to us. Death is not the greatest loss. Not truly living is. We worry about it all the time. From the minute we wake up, we are filled with fears because life is taking and eating up too much of us. Where is joy? The kind that grips us when we hold a newly born, innocent child? Where is that joy? It has dissipated. Gone with the wind. What if instead of bickering and complaining how bad and unpleasant life is, we do something about it so when death comes knocking, we can go in peace, without thoughts like “This life is so unfair!” “I wish I did less and lived more” “I want a second chance!” What it is about death that we are most afraid of? The harsh reality that we won’t be seeing that person anymore? Or is it our sentimentality and the physical connection we need with that person? I know you probably know this already, Ellen, but I’m just going to repeat it. When our paternal grandmother was on the verge and edge of dying, I couldn’t help but sob and sob, praying for some miracle to save her. But on the other hand, I also knew that I wanted her to be free of pain and medical reliance. I wanted to stop the agony that was consuming her, to stop the pain from the tubes running through her nose and stomach, and the humongous blisters that were multiplying every day. When she died, I felt a sense of relief and tranquility. I was guilty that I felt this way, but realized that the reason for my relief was knowing that the physical, emotional, and mental pain that were a part of her system for decades had now been removed and she could now start on a clean slate.

Maybe death isn’t about letting someone go and feeling guilty about our helplessness. Maybe it’s about realizing and having the courage to say “I’m going to hand you over to another dimension/place, so that you may start anew, free of chains and anguish.”

Talking to the dead, I realize, is not as bad as we seem to think. I grew up being taught that the dead would haunt you in your sleep if you did something to them. That dead souls followed you everywhere. There may be some truth to it, but it could also be just a misconception. I was stuck with this mentality for years. Children around me freaked out and screamed for help when they heard the words “ghost” and “dead”. After several visits to the cemetery, I realized that the dead are just souls in another dimension, with much to share and teach us. The cemetery holds a hauntingly mysterious vibe that pulls me in closer, as if wanting to whisper its untold secrets and stories. Wanting someone to sit down, even for a minute, and lend an ear.

Always and forever,

Josh