Jezebel...

Wow. And it just hit me like a ton of bricks. That was where it all started, wasn't it? Jez died. And it crushed me, finding out that she was gone, because I had loved Cassie, and she was just suddenly gone, and it was a life lost, that shouldn't have been, and you came to comfort me, when I needed you. You seemed to understand that I was going to need somebody there with me, without my needing to put all the words into a coherent form that night.

And that was where it started, and I just realized it. I don't agree with the Christian philosophy that there's a point to everyone's death, and that we should all be learning some type of lesson from it. I don't agree with the things that are read out at the funerals, and I've never really understood what I'm supposed to be getting comfort from when someone is gone.

Yes, when someone has lived a long, full life? And it's their time to go? Then, that I understood. When my father died, and he was young? I never understood that. His sudden, unexplained, unexpected death was unfair, and unwarranted, and it wasn't acceptable. There was no *reason* for it.

And I never accepted or wanted to hear that it was "his time" or wanted to hear that there was some "greater plan" or that there was some grand lesson to be learned.

I thought it was all bullshit, and that whatever there was to be found in that great afterlife all the Christians are always talking about, I just can't wrap my head around that. The people who believe and have that concrete faith, and can embrace that? I'm sure that's wonderful for them. But I still don't agree. I don't think that someone who is a basically decent person should have to suffer in great pain, and be miserable, to prove some kind of point, and they'll get some sort of great reward in the afterlife.

I think that if you're a good person now, you shouldn't have to suffer, and be sick and miserable, and die early. I don't think your life should be a "lesson" to everybody else. I don't think a good and just God should be subjecting people to that.

And I don't understand why Christians believe that, or embrace it. I just don't get it. I don't understand it.

And now? Now that we're still standing here, not communicating, when you're hurting, and I can't help. Now that you've suffered a loss, and it brings back a time when it was a similar loss, and you stood next to me, to hold me and make it easier on me, because I didn't understand, and you couldn't do anything but be there to make it easier? It makes me sad to know I can't do anything to help in kind.

Everything and all the of it aside, all the pain, all the harsh words, all the anger. If you look back, and you need anything, I'm still there. As I've always been, as I'll always be. Because it's what a friend does. And it's what I've always been.