I wanted to speak at the wake as well, but I was afraid to, because I
--------
I, too, felt this way. I was afraid to speak because I was afraid that
I could not do Sasha justice by anything I would say. I didn't know
anyone else there besides the people I came with, despite knowing Sasha
for almost 7 years, but always from another city. Several times I tried
to drag myself off the bench, but each time I thought that nothing I
could say really mattered at that point, Sasha was gone and anything worth
saying should have been said before. I'm not a particularly warm and open
person to begin with, but sharing grief is especially difficult for me.
I rarely talk at wakes, I prefer to write about the person and my feelings
about them.
A number of people expressed guilt. It is easy to feel guilty, or any
other emotion, once it is too late to show it to the person you cared
about. I don't know if I ever really showed Sasha how much I cared about
him, I was probably always too busy arguing with him about some technical,
political, philosophical, or other random topic, or about the details of
some project or other. He and I had had a bit of a falling-out recently
and we were slowly talking through it, it wasn't anything that wouldn't
have been worked out, but it wasn't how I wanted to leave things with
Sasha when he died - which I hadn't expected for many years to come. It
seemed nothing worse than other disagreements we'd had in the past, but
now, when it is useless, it is easy to figure out what I should have said
to him sooner. It would have done nothing more than help me feel less
guilty, nothing we had to discuss was anything more than "mild
difficulties" as Sasha had put it. Feeling guilty does nobody any good.
Any of his friends feeling guilty or angry will not do Sasha any good, nor
themselves. Now, we can merely miss him.
Sasha dead in a box without his bright eyes and wry smile, dormant instead
of full of life and energy, made the whole situation seem even more unreal.
That couldn't have been Sasha, it only vaguely looked like him, the rest
made no sense when compared to the Sasha I knew. Thus, it seems, the only
real Sasha left is the one in our memories.
I miss Sasha's voice, too. If anyone has any audio recordings of his voice,
it would be great if they could be posted to the memorial page. Same with
more photos of him smiling. These will help to jog our memories as they
begin to fail with too much time passing, as happens with all things. Not
enough time passed for Sasha, he deserved a lot more.
Live Long & Prosper,
Stephan
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Thu Jul 27 2000 - 14:11:03 MDT