The Grammar of Death

Violence turns everything — from bricks to bodies — into rubbish. Before January 16, 2019, I had never seen a body. I thought I always loved bodies — I loved describing them in my poetry and drawing limbs in pencil. I compared them to smoked cigarettes and wet ground. But I had never known was a body was.

And for the first time on that day, I saw a body. This body used to belong to a man I love, Jason Jacob Spindler. A body made of skin and muscle, that approximately at 15:40 on the afternoon of the previous day was rapidly compressed and decompressed by a bomb blast, which created mass organ failure and instant death. This bomb was set off by Al-Shabaab terrorists in 14 Riverside, an upscale hotel and business complex where my boyfriend worked.

I had never seen the thing that carried him as a body. To me, it was a blanket that embraced me, a movement that pleasured me, a creation that loved me. I knew how much water it displaced when it got into the tub with me, and I knew it’s most comfortable sleeping position.

I am almost never silent, and in the presence of such a dead thing, you can only reply with silence. Your brain does not process permanence. The thing laying on the slab was only a body. I wanted to tell it how much I loved him, desperate to feel presence from a futile being, but his friend Candida just hugged me and whispered in my ear “He always knew how you felt. He always knew.”

The grammar of death is very in fact very complex. While the body no longer belongs to Jason because he no longer exists, I still love his non-existent entity. I struggled to tell people what happened because I literally struggled with how the language. I didn’t like euphemisms like “passed away” and “gone”. “Passing” mitigated his existence. That word should be reserved for flatulence and going through non-descript Midwestern towns. “Gone” made it sound like he was missing, which he was, but that his return was imminent.

But this loss will always sit with me. This is my life now — seeing Jason when I observe the kites flying outside my balcony, or finding grief waiting for me when I open a drawer, or feeling guilt in between the courses at dinner with his friends and we don’t talk about him. My sister had a ring with his initials made for me. I will name my first son Jason. I am learning Spanish, because he loved speaking it and it makes me feel closer to him.

However, I don’t even like to say that he died, because it feels too active on his part, as if it was something that he did, chose to do, or was part of the plan. As a writer, I would never use passive voice, but I chose to say “Jason was killed by a terrorist.” He was on the receiving end of an action — a brutal act of violence. The act of violence was not senseless — it was premeditated, planned, and precise. It was carried out as they intended.

At the end of the day, there is no lesson. It’s not about taking more walks, or putting your phone down. As our friend Grant says, the fact that Jason was killed was random but inexplicable, yet the fact there was a terrorist attack was an outcome of history like any other.

He was so passionate about showing me the things he loved — wake boarding, turntables, climbing. And I got to show him the things I loved — hosting, yoga, and vipassana. He chose to spend his tired evenings and even more tired mornings with me. We both traveled so much, and I think we made the effort to see each other, but I’m sure we could have done better. We were so close to love, but to be honest, it’s only his death that made the relationship anything memorable. We were a couple, like any other: in denial, in trust, in lust.

I guess what I want to say is that I’m really, really hurting, but that I’m okay. What the books and the movies say is true — never regret the last thing you say to the people. I play back those last moments I spent with him — going grocery shopping, and sitting on his kitchen top as he prepared dinner. The mundane things move mountains.

Go now. Tell someone you love them. Hold them tight. And when they say it back, savor it. Feel it really land on your skin, and remember how fragile life is, but how powerful living on is.