\cleardoublepage
\begin{quote}
\itshape\Large
A personal question, if there is an Odist willing to answer it: Was there a funeral after Michelle quit?
\end{quote}

\cleardoublepage

\subsection*{A Finger Pointing}

\subsubsection*{The short answer:}

No, there was not.

\subsubsection*{The long answer:}

\emph{Not as such.}

She brought us all together to the field in which she first dreamt up our dandelions. She did so because she had intended to quit for some months after Qoheleth's death, and because it was crucial to her that she understand each of us in as much depth as one can hope to understand oneself.

When she received our merges and, in nearly the same breath, quit under the gravity of one hundred selves and tens of thousands of lifetimes, many of us were stunned. Some did not expect that the merge would be the moment of death; others saw the writing on the walls; others, still, knew well what it meant to take on so much experience at once, knew well that even the savviest of us could not bear such weight.

So there was the flattened grass where only moments ago she stood, there was the warm breeze that always entertains this sim, and there was the shock and despair of ninety-nine Odists rendered unwhole for the second time. Unwhole and, now, disconnected, disjointed.

We are no strangers to grief, but neither are we exactly comfortable with it. Many of us still struggle to tolerate the mere sound of RJ's name. We often speak about em in euphemism, as if our own little \emph{HaShem}. Even after Sasha's \emph{Ode}, we keep eir nickname to ourselves, covet it as a cherished secret as if for it to be known would be to drive the final nail into eir coffin.

We stumbled through our grief as one in that field, held one another, cried our tears of anguish, suffered our collective misery for what would be the last time we ever joined so completely. And then, in ones or twos, we gradually diminished. There were fewer and fewer of us in that field, and though my muse was among the first to go with a fork of mine, I remained with Slow Hours and The Only Constant. We three lingered with what remained of the other stanzas, lingered well into an evening that the sim did not perform for us.

There were the outbursts of crying, of bickering, the softness of cooing and silence. There was the rhythm of \emph{Kaddish}, though those of us most experienced with such were already at synagogue; the ensuing laughter as some dozen of us stumbled through a prayer few of us had ever seriously practiced was terribly hysterical, and at once crucial to relieving us of that direness we felt.

We had no body to bury, my dear, and all the time in the world to dedicate to our grief. So our funeral was then and it was there.

\clearpage

\subsection*{What Right Have I}

\subsubsection*{The short answer:}

No, there was not.

\subsubsection*{Longer answer}

\emph{Not as such.}

When Michelle/Sasha summoned us to her field, I was not expecting that which I received.

I was expecting that perhaps she would seek input from us.

We had heard so little from her over the years. She sought out Rav From Whence and I at one point to discuss her inherited faith, what it had to say about suffering, what it had to say about grieving. We spoke of Job and his woes, his wish to call God to account. Why was it that he was caused to suffer so? What, also, did the interpretations of this text have to say about what it was that he went through?

She summoned more from the third stanza, those of us who delved deep into spirituality. We brought before her Unknowable Spaces, who spoke about grief and the ways in which it interacts with the soul, the spirit, and the self. Unknowable Spaces brought with her a friend who had been a doctor, phys-side, who spoke to the ways in which suffering interacts with the body.

When she spoke of heaven of hell, of paradise and eternal conscious torment, I cried. Many of us cried! She looked only tired. Unknowable spaces recited for her a quote from Rabi'a al-'Adiwiyya al-Qaysiyya:

\begin{verse}
O God! If I worship You for fear of Hell, burn me in Hell\\
and if I worship You in hope of Paradise, exclude me from Paradise.\\
But if I worship You for Your Own sake,\\
grudge me not Your everlasting Beauty.
\end{verse}

I cried yet more and spoke of the ways in which the Jewish view of the afterlife changed over the millennia, how originally there was \emph{Sheol,} that place of darkness and rest and eternal sleep, and then, as the Jews collided with other cultures, this began to lean towards thoughts of paradise, and with that thoughts of some cruel inversion. I asked her to consider Qohelet --- the teacher, not he who was a part of her --- and his gentle admonition to consider the ways in which one strove as well as the ways in which one suffered in the face of so much rest to come: \emph{Whatever it is in your power to do, do with all your might. For there is no action, no reasoning, no learning, no wisdom in Sheol, where you are going.}

From Whence said, ``Strive with an eye to the betterment of all, and consider that, if you are \emph{b'tzelem Elohim,} made in the image of God, that includes \emph{you,} my dear.''

And so when she summoned us that awful day, I expected other than what I got.

I was expecting that perhaps she had words to say about Qoheleth, about his rise and fall, about how it was that \emph{she} felt about his assassination. were it someone within the clade who had organized this --- and none had ever come forward --- then ought we not find a way to discuss paths forward?

I was expecting perhaps, in some roundabout way, reconciliation. Her with her clade, the clade with itself, all of us with the world in which we lived.

How naïve I am! How foolish I was to hold such hope!

So when she asked us to merge down, when I began to understand what it was that she was doing, I wept and tore at my garments. I tried to keep it to myself, but in the end, I collapsed to the grass, curled into as tight a ball as I could, with my snout all but tucked into the ground as though I could shield myself from what I knew must be coming.

Rav From Whence bade me look up just in time to see her disappear once and for all from existence, and we said ``\emph{Baruch atah, Adonai Eloheinu, melekh ha'olam, dayan ha'emet,}'' the announcement of a death, and returned to our synagogue.

There we fought, and bitterly, as to whether or not this occasioned a funeral. Rav From Whence argued for yes, for the funeral was for the people, not for the dead, and I argued for no, because the funeral was also for the dead, and she could not be, for we lived on. This discussion was old and tired, for we had debated this for nigh on a century. Was the quitting of a cladist a death or something else if the clade lived on? Did the manner of quitting matter? If they quit of despair, was that suicide? If they crashed? If CPV claimed them? It was our evergreen \emph{halakha} to argue, just\ldots never in so immediate terms.

I stepped away and did not return for thirty days, preferring to sit in my half-\emph{Shloshim} while wandering, overflowing, believing now that she was dead, now that she was not, feeling now a sense of spiritual ecstasy, now a sense of abandonment. I asked a million billion trillion times why we suffered, why \emph{she} suffered --- and whether or not God replied, asked a million billion trillion times again ``Look, I am worthless. What can I say back to You?''

When I returned, I asked Rav From Whence to give me some space from the topic. I said my \emph{kaddish} and always put off the topic of the funeral until she stopped bringing it up. After all, as Wakefield put it,

\begin{verse}
There are ways around being the go-to person\\
even for ourselves\\
even when the answer is clear\\
clear like the holy water Gentiles would drink\\
before they realized\\
forgiveness is the release of all hope for a better past
\end{verse}

I rely on the words of others because I do not know. If there was a funeral, I did not attend, and if all that had once been her did not --- or did not even \emph{know} --- did it truly take place?''
