and so he left?

I don't understand death or its meaning – in fact, I am quite convinced it has none (except, of course, that the dead person is gone). They put it down to a lack of sensitivity, or feeling, my incapability to feel the loss. But I do! I am at a loss. What does it mean, to be dead?

It is not hard to see what dying means: You end. The world unravels and your thoughts with it. Some terror maybe, a little pain – perhaps a little more. And then? Out.

Then all that is left is us, the living – what was it for? Maybe nothing. Consider: In truth, what changed but the fact that a person you once knew (or thought you knew) irrevocably extracted himself from your life? It is a break-up, plain and simple. (The circumstances changed; it just didn't work out; it is nobody's fault; we've drifted apart.)

Which brings me to my question, the one which has bothered me ever since the possibility presented itself in an eleven-year-old mind: What difference does it make for the living whether I just leave – emigrate to Cuba, maybe – or whether I die? You can't see, touch, feel me, and would it break your heart? You say, yes, but why then is there a strange comfort in knowing that somehow, somewhere I am alive? Perhaps, this is why we invented heaven. Perhaps, this is why we lie about death and speak not its name. 

Perhaps, this is why I act so unfazed – because we've all been left before, and what difference does it make? I miss. I just don't think it's unusual.