Britney

It is Friday, April 5, the day that Kurt Cobain died 19 years ago. I am on a bus on the way to school, listening to Nirvana’s In Utero on my cassette player and staring up at the gray sky through the window, which is wet and foggy from the light rain. I’m reading a book where a character gets his friends to hold a pre-funeral for him, reading eulogies they would give if he were really dead.

The thought of death, of the world existing without you after you’re gone, is almost too much to handle. Both living forever and eventually dying are horrible in their own ways; and anyway none of us has a choice, which makes it worse. I don’t want to die. I don’t want anyone around me to die. And I don’t want to keep thinking about death.

A while ago, I experienced the worst form of dejection that I have ever known. It was a time when I feared death yet never stop thinking about it. I didn’t want to die. I didn’t want anyone around me to die. The only consolation I had was living, which I found hard to do when thinking about the future. It lasted for a few years, going on and off until I met with my school’s guidance counselor about it. It stopped after that, and now, for a few moments, it reappears. I cannot help it; I cry. I cry for Kurt, and for the 17 dead people that exist for each one of the living. I cry for the living as well, for having to know that this thing called death exists.

When we die, who remembers us? When they die, too, are we lost, our ashes claimed by wind and blown away from existence? Did Kurt wonder if almost two decades after he died, people would listen to his music and cry? ♦