A Closure, Finally ...

My tears rolled down my cheeks instantaneously, my head was stricken with internal pain, and my lungs started gasping for breath. I had just seen the picture of my relative's grave. I was reading some notes on facebook and mistakenly clicked on his daughter's notes and was immediately faced with a white tombstone with his name engraved on it. It was a harsh reality-check that I have refused to admit for almost 4 years now. His memorial is coming up, it will have been 4 years since he was buried on April 7th, 2005. I re-lived that shock because I had never visited his grave; more like always rejected to visit it; perhaps because subconsciously visiting it was an admittance that he has died; something which was too painful for me to believe. Seeing the picture can maybe finally make me oblige myself to be convinced that he has died; maybe it is the closure that everyone got and that I refused to get.
His death raised a lot of question inside me. Questions that I was desperate for answers for. Why do bad things happen to good people? Why is it always the nicest, purest, loveliest, most honest, and one of my favourites. He was my third-favourite relative ever - and I have a lot of relatives; only my grandfather and one of my uncles came before him. Other questions I never thought I would be asking in regards to a loved one ... and I am not sure that answers to them would satisfy me. Why did they have to kill him that way? Why did they have to throw his dead body in the sea? (Are we in some silly Soprano's episode where if you are a threat to the big man's bank account then you are running the risk of sleeping with the fish!!!) Why did they have to torture him for endless hours until his face and body were distorted beyond recognition? When his body was found - picked up by fishermen - the police needed a family member to identify the dead body; my uncle was one of the very few people who saw the dead body ... he tried to identify his cousin and friend in that body ... he couldn't ... no one could ... he could only confirm his identity from his fingers and his wedding ring ... The family then took a decision that no one is to see the dead body because such a sight of a loved one is unbearable; they even made sure that the coffin was locked for the funeral so that none of the women of the family would be able to open the coffin in a moment of grief wanting to say to a close goodbye ...
... I googled news about him a few days ago but I couldn't find any articles because the newspapers in Lebanon don't keep online archives for more than a few weeks; I did however come across a website that had a news article saying that his body was found ... it also had a picture of his body laying flat on his face ... I got furious because it is not legal to post pictures of dead people without their families' consent! I also got another headache because I recognized the back of his head and his very grey hair ... I can deny it no more no matter how hard I want to ...
Today, as his memorial approaches, I tear up every time I remember and I wonder if I will ever forget the detailed memories of the days of that April ... but this upcoming memorial there is a different thing, there is a certainty I can't escape ... this memorial - and unlike the previous ones - I know that his death was real, I know that I can no longer lie to myself, and I know that I have finally believed that he is not coming back because he is not in this world any more ... he has died and left this cruel world that didn't deserve him ... what remains now is us and our attempts to convince ourselves that he is in a better place ...