Eyeballs

Aren't her eyes pretty? They belong to my baby baby sister. (as opposed to just my baby sister. I have two of them you see.) I see these eyes all the time. Aw, you think, she must be at her parent's house frequently to see them all the time. Mind you, I am home quite often. But I see those eyes even oftener. Do they haunt me in my dreams? Do I see them every time I close my eyes? Nothing so fine sounding, I assure you. It's because she's a thief. Yup, a thief.
Anything that I own that is a recording device somehow, sometime, when my back is turned, when I least expect it, this little monkey scampers around the house taking pictures of her eyes. Then when I upload my pictures, or flip through my phone photos, or go through my ipod tracks I see a familiar eye looking unrepentantly up at me. Much the same when I confront those eyeballs in living color. I suppose she is right. Whenever I'm missing my baby baby sister, I have many opportunities to pull up a picture and gaze into her eyeballs.

Death

Life really isn't like a box of chocolates. Because even if you get a gross filling, at least the outside was sweet. The outside was covered in chocolate, so there was that moment of "this might possibly turn out okay" before the cherry cough syrupy center implodes in your mouth. Life is often unsweet from bitter beginning to bitter end. Sometimes I can't even wrap my mind around all the pain and all the suffering of this world. I see so much of it, yet I'm sure it's still just a small taste.
Why do people blow their heads off? We try to laugh about it at work, and tell our families the 'best' way to shoot yourself, if you're going to do it. But it's not funny. There is no 'best' way. It's just horrible. It's horrible for your soul, it's horrible for the people you leave behind, it's horrible for the people who take care of you until the final, inevitable end.
I didn't even know you, but I knew your family for a brief moment. I felt their sorrow, I felt their anger, I felt their resignation, I felt their despair, I felt their panic. And I watched you die. And now what's left? A hollow empty shell, I zip into a white bag. It's never like the movies, where the body is white and the mouth is closed. Your mouth hangs slack jawed, your skin yellowed. Your wife wants your mouth closed, but I can't even do that for her. Death has truly taken everything. Oh Death, where is your victory, where is your sting? It is here. Right here with a hopeless family, at the bitter end.