The things they don't tell you about death

You've seen death a thousand times on television, they can't  get enough of it. They show you the screams, a frozen moment of blinding grief and pain. Then it fades to black.

They don't show you the waiting. Waiting in the hospital to know if this is the time it ends. Long moments of tense boredom, unable to help, watching someone suffer.

Waiting for a piece of paper to certify it happened. Why does it take them days? What fact could be more simple to prove than death.

They don't show you sifting through paperwork. Banks and charities and bills and all these supposedly vital elements of life. Finding ways to discover passwords for websites, wondering what will happen to your shadow on the internet when your time comes.

They don't show you smiling politely and saying thank you, when people say they're sorry, again and again. The awkward pause and lying and saying its all okay.

Funerals should be moments of high drama, they don't tell you about the logistics, the tiresome exercise of planning, standing waiting for it to start so it can be over.

The don't tell you how tired you will be.

They don't tell you about the strange little pangs you get when you find a half finished book.

Throwing out or donating the possessions accumulated over a lifetime. Bagging and sorting and lifting and trips to the dump.

The don't tell you how the great truth of human life is made neither sacred or horrible, but crushingly mundane.