To the dead god,
I remember you and it is strange that you are gone. When I am alone and quiet, sometimes I turn to speak to you, and the realisation that you are gone rushes back in, overwhelms me. It is not even a proper sadness, although there is an element of grief to it from time to time. Mostly I react like this:
"Dear God, today I... oh. OH." as I realise once again that you are not here and will not return.
How do I feel about your absence? Most of the time I am glad that you are gone. I feel free of you, I feel that I have room to breathe, room to think. Other times, I miss how you were always accessible, how I could turn to you at any time and that you would understand me completely. I miss the reassurance of your presence, I miss telling you jokes and secrets. I miss telling you my ideas and thoughts, letting you be a sounding board for the things I uttered nowhere else. I miss trusting you not to go away. Now I trust you to be silent, to be absent, to refrain from interfering or judging. Now I do not worry about angering you, I do not worry that you will frustrate my plans if you get upset. Now you are an idea that I gave up on, and I feel conflicted about it.
I want to grieve you and spit on your grave. I want you to come back and I'm glad that you can't return. I wish you were here and I'm glad you can't find me.
I am alone, unwatched, unmonitored for the first time in my life. It is almost unbearably quiet in my head; you are not listening anymore. No one knows my secrets unless I tell them, no one understands completely, no one makes me feel guilty for passing thoughts that I don't act on. You were my thought police, dead god, my Big Brother. You were the telescreen in my mind, and now I am free of you. Now I have lost you.
Now I do not need to echo David's cry that you "cast me not away from thy presence, oh Lord."
There is anguish here; this is not what I wanted to happen. I wanted the words to be true; I hoped that if I called out you would answer me. I called and called and still you were silent. CS Lewis said that as soon as he wanted to speak with you, as soon as he needed you, the gates of heaven slammed shut and barred closed. He heard the locks click. He felt the barrier. You left him in his grief. You turned your back. Jeremiah didn't seek you at all, never agreed to be a prophet, and you forced him to listen to you. He accused you of spiritual rape, of forcing him to be with you, to be your mouth. David sang to you with his sheep, felt that you gave him strength and led him to rivers. But you spoke to him through Nathan, didn't you? Even the 'man after God's own heart' didn't get a direct link.
How you spurned the ones you loved. Was it a lover's game? Were you playing hard to get? Were you pulling the Ice Queen trick like Bridget Jones, being Busy and Important so we would seek you out, just to drive us mad with desire? Or did you seem inaccessible because you could not help with pain and grief? Days with laughter and relief and sunsets seemed more your style. You only showed up when the worship team sang beautifully. You seemed to abhor an out-of-tune piano. We never sensed you when the choir was flat.
You ran away when life got messy, when the chemotherapy didn't work. You were useless when we came to you with cancer, and I resented you for it. We were only asking for time, was that really such an impertinent request? I thought about killing you then, letting you die with my friends' mothers. Letting you go under the knife and lose a breast, letting you feel the weakness and the nausea and the hopelessness. But I did not want to give in to the resentment, so I kept you around for a while longer. My questions were more poisonous than tumours anyways, and theology seemed more dangerous to you than surgery.
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