It doesn't matter.

"Much is debated about death as a natural part of life, yet it remains uncertain how people truly respond to it despite many displays of sorrow or clear indifference. Individuals often focus on the moment of death, the exact instance or its cause, instead of what follows. This focus stems from the overwhelming nature of death, creating a need to find accountability, whether with a person or the situation. Indeed, the same death that brings tears of grief can also evoke tears of joy. What if it can be both at once? He understood that silence can express so much more than any lies—whether they're shouted or whispered. And of course, waiting for a moment—not just for him, but for everyone who shared in their sadness and found comfort, especially knowing that she had supported others—would have truly felt fair. Yet, the world sometimes feels more about opportunism than fairness or gratitude. It's about seizing opportunities. In the end, waiting without any action—nothing I hoped for seemed likely—felt like the most honest response to that waiting: disappointment. Yet again, that rings true. Yes. Even when she was alive, they chose not to visit her despite having the chance. It’s just how modern life goes. There’s no need to express gratitude; she had everything she needed.

In one of the many legends, humans claim that they forget to consider the moment of their death unless it is approaching. And when they do, that urgency makes it neither easy nor effective to convey to others the wisdom that life fully imparts. In human legends, there is somehow an after despite being the end. And what if there were no after? The wisest men in human history understood it: it doesn't matter. It will matter when death has already arrived. It took him several days to sit down and write, despite the unfinished book of poems and the novel he has yet to complete. He didn't believe that something as mundane as the death of his grandmother would affect him at all. I realize I've known him since he left everything behind to become a true writer; I've never seen him so determined yet also erratic. Perhaps that's why he accepted help when we found him in front of that bar, having not gone inside—he had been standing there for over two hours, lost in thought and staying still.

"The aftermath will be contemplated when one is there," said the wise men, and they are right. The rest is uncertainty, and even if it is reduced to chance or destiny, the same destiny that some have also claimed to oppose, uncertainty remains largely that, while destiny is a human invention designed to nurture faith. That highlights the difference between waiting and hope: the former is sustained by supposed patience, while the latter is fueled by the same belief that hinders progress rather than inspires it. Ultimately, this reflects what occurs in human groups: deceiving oneself and perpetuating the deception to others. He felt very sleepy, so much so that it didn't matter if he arrived at 9 pm. It doesn't matter. Many things stopped mattering since he abandoned himself to what he would achieve day by day, on the current of the water, with no other expectation than the next day.  Nothing was known of her beyond the phrases she once spoke and the endless silences that nourished her deception—her version. This mattered despite her claiming to have fallen in love. But it wasn’t love; it was mere passion and desire, which must have continued until that desire (rather than love) transferred to another person.

Poetically, death seems to hold more meaning than the word etymologically suggests. Religiously (though it is not poetry), it is often seen as punitive. From the minority perspective, humans have managed to contemplate cycles of return (returning from where and to what? and where?). Very few others have simply understood that the most important thing is life, more so than death itself. After all, death is part of life. It should not be oblivion. Dying is not as sad in the end as feeling that indifference, that supposed oblivion. That morning, he received an unexpected call, and only then did he realize that she truly loved him. She loved him. Love is not lost; it remains over time, even the longing for what was before. That true love he had learned to extract from life, to capture in those paintings that one day, not now, collectors would seek to say they had something of his. Now, he was simply discarded. Or worse yet, ignored to avoid becoming an unbearable memory one day. Those are the worst. And he didn't know it, but he is already one of them."