The King's Jester

"I knew him, Horatio: a fellow of infinite jest, of most excellent fancy … Where be your gibes now? your gambols? your songs? your flashes of merriment, that were wont to set the table on a roar? Not one now, to mock your own grinning?"

- Shakespeare, ‘Hamlet’

When a loved one dies, it’s like losing a part of one’s body that one didn’t even know was there, until it is torn away without warning, leaving a deep wound in its place that will never completely heal.

It was sudden, unexpected, a shockwave which is still rippling throughout the community of those who knew him. Even now, almost a full week afterwards (time is moving far too fast, especially now), it feels as though a sick joke is being played upon us all. Tears are being shed, both publicly and in private; stories are being shared with fondness and laughter; and too many people are wondering what happens next. He was a friend, lover, parent; a wise Fool who died far too soon.

My emotions are a confusing mixture of anger, sadness and selfishness. Anger, because he could have, should have, taken better care of himself; sadness, because a friend whom I have known on and off over the past fifteen years or so is forever gone; and selfishness, because I know that there will not be nearly as many loving tributes said about me when I’m dead. I seldom form close relationships with anybody, and that comes with a price.

It’s shameful of me to make such comparisons, or to make such unfair judgements against the dead, as if life were some sort of popularity contest. I know that I don’t have the right, especially when there are so many around me who are feeling this loss so profoundly. My family is going to have to live with this for the rest of their lives. They are going to have to learn to live with one less friend, one less lover, one less parent, and it is neither fair nor just.

It is often said that, when someone dies, they have “gone ahead,” or have “left behind” family, friends and loved ones, when it’s the opposite that’s true: it is we, the living, who must leave the dead behind. In the end, bodies are burned or buried, and we have to walk on in whatever directions our lives take. We carry remnants of the dead with us, in one form or another, but they’re ghosts, poor substitutes for what has been lost.

If there is anything positive about this, it’s that his death makes me grateful for all the good things that have happened and are still happening in my life, especially love. I have been reminded again just how lucky I am to love and be loved.

I am terrible at good-bye’s, and I don’t really go in for all that ‘we’ll-see-each-other-again-on-the-other-side’ sentimentality, because it’s likely that this is it. This is the one life we get: it’s beautiful, it’s painful, and it comes with an expiry date.

We are all living on borrowed time. And it’s always later than you think.