A partially written Master’s thesis.
Half-completed songs.
Medication bottles with pills still inside.
An unmade bed.
A guitar halfway strung.
Bills unpaid.
A bottle of water never finished.
A face of stubble never shaved.
Laundry that needed washing.
Tickets to concerts never to be attended.
A cat that needed to be fed.
Work and volunteer commitments left incomplete.
Phone calls that needed returning.
Appointments on the calendar.
Texts that never got a reply.
Plans left unfulfilled.
Apologies never given or received.
Words left unsaid.
All of these things were left undone. Unfinished. Untidy. Incomplete.
Death isn’t clean, especially sudden death. There’s a mess left behind. Pieces to pick up. Some of them were completed easily and some of them were never completed at all. Some took a lot of guesswork. Some were simple.
One minute he was there, and the next he was not. And all of these things still remained. Never to be touched by him again. Never to be fulfilled. Some of them perhaps would never have been completed. But, who’s to say? I wish he could have stayed a little longer. Maybe if he’d stayed long enough to go to that concert. Maybe if he stayed long enough for one more shift at work. Or if he’d taken his medicine one more day. Or, one more song completed. Maybe then he’d have stayed and stayed and stayed…
