How I know I was known

You chose my funeral song. The Neko Case song you chose for your own would make a beautiful and fitting dirge. I hope whoever buries you knows of this and fulfills your request.

I was/am listening to the Starflyer 59 album containing the song "We the Ordinary," the song you reverently chose to play at my service should you outlast me. I remember you were sorry for having chosen this song after scrutinizing it some but I was and still am imminently moved by your choice. There is only a faint tinge of a remembered hope in this song unlike the usual threnody that tries to push images of "the great beyond" and arriving in better places or flying away to home.

We're ordinary people
Close but not the worst
But I think you know
We're all the lonely people

Alone but not at first
But I think you know

The older living people
Who've been through even worse
But I think you know
Just like the other people

Alone but not at first
But I think you know
Sometimes we don't have a life


True, very true. Maybe one of the saddest songs I have ever heard but also one of the most resonant. I used to my brothers and sisters who share the same faith I do that we have the ability to not even know what it feels like to be lonely because we have the spiritual presence of our Lord's comfort. I was incredibly foolish. Jesus was a man isolated and rejected above all and knew practically nothing but loneliness. I had not intended to go here but I used to use this matter of loneliness and the supposed lack-there-of as a selling point to myself for why following Jesus Christ makes sense. I once wrote a very simple and creativity poor poem in high school called "I like goodbyes" that explained why I prefer parting rather than greetings. I said I liked the intense feelings they engender because I found those more profound than the ones accompanying meeting someone new or the gradual warmth of a friendship burgeoning over time. I relished loneliness because I thought I was above it and it was a sort of luxurious treat to partake of when I knew I had stored up enough joy to withstand it. The rush of self-inflicted isolation was thrilling.

Little did I know there is nothing as heart breaking or despised as the person truly alone. I thought emotional pain was a game because I was delusional concerning the immense wall I had constructed around my heart and soul. There has only been one person I have ever truly loved selflessly and only one person who has showed me that love of that sort exists. Also, belied by your duly chosen requiem for me, you were the only person who truly knows how lonely I have been my whole life.

I have no idea if that warrants a thank you or something else but nonetheless I thank you with only fond thoughts from now on.

I also wish to point out that on the ablum containing "We the Ordinary" it is only two songs away from "Fell in Love at 22," the song we danced to at our wedding. The most hopeful and perfectly nostalgic song I have ever heard.