Dancing Through the Cosmos
"Think of how small you are. You're even smaller than that. You're the tiniest speck of dust on this mote of existence. Our senses are our little peepholes into the realm of the universe, but we know not the whole scope or even the idea of the rest. Like those 25-cent binoculars at tourist places, our tiny lifetime is the quarter we spend, and we get this one chance to savor the look before it's gone forever. But seriously, grab onto anyone else who gives a damn, because that's so rare in this bleak, hopeless world. Grab onto that one speck to do a tragic dance through the cosmos."
These are the words of my dead brother, Jack. He had always been an introspective thinker, contemplating the insignificance of himself with his head turned up towards the skies, and it shows in his work. While sitting in a church overflowing with people who cared about him, I finally understood his desolate and grim outlook. That may seem contradictory, but we are so small, so minuscule it's terrifying, yet that's not what matters. I believe what matters is the human connections you make during your pathetically trivial life, the specks you grab onto, and the things you leave behind with them.
Jack's funeral was full of these connections, tangling and overlapping into a complex web of stories and experiences. Dozens of people spoke at the podium, slowly putting together the puzzle of Jack's life that was unknown to me. His young, shaking voice on stage as he sang his first solo, his bravado while acting out the role of King Creon in English class. How he was the first kid to jump into the pool, the little boy who mistakenly followed another family to their car, and the friend who made a girl's first day of kindergarten easier. So many people signed his guitar, each message a relationship Jack had forged. His existence had touched the lives of so many other people, and I could only watch in awe of its sprawling, beautiful reach.
Through this experience, I learned to celebrate what Jack did, not mourn what he could've done. For a long time, I allowed myself to be swept up in the unfairness of it all, and I had a mantra repeating in my head like a circling wolf. If he had more time. He didn't deserve it. He still had so much to see. I had so many more things to tell him. But at his funeral, I began to remember the real Jack.
The Jack who would show me movies, watching my face for reactions instead of the screen. The Jack who inflicted stomach cramp-inducing laughter across an entire room, who captivated an entire audience with his thundering words. He would always get up and get my sister a coke regardless of how disgruntled he was, and would always race down the stairs when our mother called for dinner. He was my mother’s fourth child and the baby my father held. Jack was my older brother, one who tried to make me pancakes, but burnt them so horrendously I had to cook for the both of us even though I was only 10. He was the one who inspired me to write, through his gritty film noir stories and his unnecessarily complex pretend games. He had a mole with a hair growing out of it, a beauty mark on his lip, and dark brown eyes that always sparkled with mischief.
He may have been a speck, but he did it all. He made the most of his fleeting 18 years. Jack danced through the cosmos, and he will forever be immortalized in the twinkling constellations of my memories.