Why I don't go to funerals.

Why I probably won't come to your funeral.

I don't believe you are dead.

Dead is a word we made up to cover the range of emotions we feel when you are gone.

You, gone from your recognizable self, from your form that walks and talks and crawls and breathes, the one we are most comfortable with.

But I still see you in the clouds and in the rain, and in my memory, and sometimes you are still so vivid and alive to me that I forget you are not here in your old-self-costume. The body that disguised you.

So you are a part of me now.

And I am not dead.

So instead, I'll celebrate inside of me, with you, every day.

I will miss your voice, it's sad that it's gone from my ears, but I probably won't come to your funeral, because you are not dead.