Crumbling

I know how people get addicted to opiates.

If the devil himself came to me now, ablaze with fearful glory and hooves announcing his passage with clops echoing throughout time like the surest doom, if he came right now to my living room and offered to trade my alcohol-filled cup with a substance that would erase all the pain of my mind, the pain of my soul, even for a little while, I would only be able to murmur my grateful thanks and open my hands. And I cannot doubt that I would open them.

Don't you understand that I would welcome the devil? I would welcome him - he would be proof of something beyond this, incontrovertible, real and even familiar. Don't you understand that I have seen evil in its guises but that it has proved nothing of what is beyond the curtain of death? I have smelled it on people, seen it aglow in their eyes, I have felt it in my veins, I have watched it on the news, I have seen it eat the health of people I loved, and in the end it has come to nothing. If only there was a Satan to helm all of it and take eternal responsibility, to materialize and give the unwilling doubtful some measure of peace.

My aunt is dying. The jig is up this time. Her large intestine has ruptured and they can't fix it; they fear she'll die on the table at this point. They have sent her home with hospice that has in their possession the mercy of morphine. An opiate. How quaint. We're going to see her tomorrow, I promised we would, I said I would even drive and I will.

But god how I do and don't want to. Gods.

I am haunted by the dying faces I have seen. I remember them. I loved them. I still love them. I always will and damn it I want to know there is someplace for them, somehow, somewhere, a heaven, a place for us all to finally be okay. We come to in this life as if into a dream, not knowing how we came or where we'll end up, almost blind. We do the best we can. I will argue that before any god that dares to show me a face, here or hereafter - we do the best we can and we're small and weak and damn it we try and for all our faults we could use some heaven. Do you hear me? And I would gladly give what I could to secure bliss for the great people I've known, and even the not-so-great, and even the criminal. For my aunt.

I would give myself, if I could, I would - for them, for as many as I could. I would give myself. Open my hands. For them.