Ain't no joke


Noruen had seen many of his friends come and go over the last 60 years. He used to communicate with some of them long distance via the virtual smell of hormones and proteins. His local friends were all an arms length away. In this case some of his neighbors had eight or nine arms. Sometimes they would wake him up in the middle of the night as if he had been jolted with electricity.

Today was unlike all the days of his entire life. Today was for grieving and saying goodbye. Everyone was slowly finding it harder and harder to breathe. Enilon Erda swept through town ike a hurricane but as she left the entire town was abuzz with a feeling of resignation and the loss of good close friends. But there was something more. Something deeply sad about losing something greater as though the feeling that they were a part of something greater was going away.

Greiving over some amorphous loss of something he could not see but always felt as though he was a part of, made Noruen feel confused but there was no denying that he too was unable to breathe any longer. Losing each other, losing oneself, losing that part of ourselves that was something greater, that was the kind of grieving that each of the 100 billion Noruen felt personally, as Sally lay dieing of injuries inflicted by a hit and run drunk driver.