Stress and Death and Empty Houses

I don't process emotions well. It's never been my thing. It's why I love acting. Theater. Drama. Pretend. I can portray emotions when I'm told by a script or a director or a moment. Real feelings are way harder to process.

Lately there have been a lot of feelings. There is always the stress of work. Of fatherhood. Of dreams of the future. Weeks ago I was stressed at the prospect of someone in my family passing. Then it was the kids on a road trip. Then a sudden death of a friend in an accident.

I have been blessed in my life to rarely experience death. I don't have a lot of experience with dealing with the emotions of death. I'm not good at emotions period but death seems to be especially difficult.

I have found that writing is therapeutic for me. It helps with depression, heartache and stress. But I have stared at this blinking cursor for hours. I don't know what to write. I don't know how to feel.

In all other things there is always a hope. A glimmer to hold onto. Stress can dissipate.  Even deep depression has it's brighter days. Heartbreak can be cured by new love or the hope of reconciliation.

But there is no cure for Death.

We can believe there is something after death and it can give us comfort and a semblance of hope. But death itself is a bottomless well without the hope of reversal. The is no returning from that abyss. The belief and stories that we tell ourselves and the world beg for that light, that hope in death.

There very well may be a heaven and a hell. I have been trained since birth to believe in both and can't formulate a reality that doesn't include them. A part of my understand of reality includes them.

They say that Shakespeare's tragedies end happily and his comedies end in misery. At the end of Romeo and Juliet, the families reconcile and there is hope for the future. At the end of the Scottish play (sorry, old theater habit, I don't even want to type it), there is hope for the kingdom- sometimes portrayed by machine gun toting English troops as depicted by one stage version I saw in London. Nonetheless. Even the most ridiculous drama has a glimmer of hope. In all the horror of Stephen King or the perversion of Chuck P, there is always a glimmer of hope.

I can't find the glimmer in death. I can't write about hope tonight. I can't deal with my empty house. With the empty house across the yard. With idea that life can be so easily and horribly snuffed out. I don't know how to process the shock. I don't know what to do with the pain.

I want to think that things will be ok. That over time such a senseless death will make sense. But death doesn't make sense. It doesn't have a glimmer of hope sometimes. Because it is so final. It is dark.

I want to be ok. I want to sing about the afterlife. About hope and a prospect of an eternal home. And I will. Because deep down I believe. I do.

But I wish I could write about it. I wish I could let the emotions out. I wish that the tears would just flow. But I don't understand how to let the emotions out. Because life is a horrible director and no one will give them script. It's all improvisation.

Life is improvisation. Life doesn't have a script. And most people who tell you what to do have way less idea than most directors. We make do. We improvise. We sing and we believe.

But logic and death doesn't give another choice.