If Heaven Is Endless, Why Am I Afraid I'll Never Find You?

Grief gave me a question faith has never been able to answer.

The last thing I ever said to you was a lie dressed up as a promise, and I didn't even know it yet.
Till we meet again.
I said it the way we always said it; the way we'd said it a hundred times before, at bus stops, at airport gates, at the end of nights that went on too long and still weren't long enough. It was our line. Our stupid, ordinary, sacred line. You'd throw a hand up without even turning around, already halfway out the door, and say it like it cost you nothing, because it never had before. Because there was always a next time. There was always more time.
There is no more time now. There is only the sound the earth made; that low, obscene susurrus of soil surrendering onto wood, fistful after fistful, each one a small and merciless full stop punctuating a sentence I was not ready to end. I remember thinking, absurdly, that the ground was in a hurry. That it wanted you. That it closed over you the way a mouth closes over a held breath, and I stood there useless in my one good coat while it did, watching the last visible inch of you;a sliver of pale wood, a dull brass fitting catching the grey light; disappear beneath a darkness so total it seemed to swallow the very idea of light. I remember the specific, unbearable violence of ordinariness: that the sky did not tear open, that no bell tolled, that birds went on quarrelling in a nearby tree as if nothing in the architecture of the universe had just been irreparably undone. The world simply continued, indifferent and unhurried, while mine came apart in total silence.
Till we meet again.
I don't know why I said it. Habit, maybe. Or maybe some starved, animal part of me still expected you to laugh at me from somewhere just out of sight, the way you used to when I fell for one of your jokes a beat too late. I flung the words down into that black rectangle like a rope thrown to someone already lost beneath the surface of black water; knowing, even as I threw it, that it would not reach, that there was nothing left down there for it to catch on, only silence, only the terrible, patient dark, only the last of you being folded into the earth like a letter no one would ever read again.
You didn't pick up. You will never pick up. And the knowing of that settled into me not as a thought but as a wound;something that did not ache so much as it simply, permanently, rearranged the shape of me.
And walking home that night; past the same streets we used to walk loud and sixteen and certain we were both going to live forever; a thought came for me that I have never once been able to outrun since.
What if we don't meet again?
Not what if there's nothing after this. I could survive that. Nothing is at least quiet. Nothing doesn't lie to you. What I mean is worse. What if there's an after, an enormous after, an after with room in it for everyone who has ever died; and you are somewhere in that after, and I will be somewhere in that after too, someday, and we simply never find each other? What if eternity isn't reunion. What if eternity is just two people, endlessly, hopelessly, missing each other in the dark, the way we used to miss each other's calls when we were both bad at answering our phones; except this time no one leaves a voicemail, because this time there's no next morning to call back.
I think about that and something in my chest folds in on itself like paper held too close to a flame.
Because we build this whole comforting architecture, don't we. this idea that love earns you a reunion, that the universe is fair enough, kind enough, organized enough to make sure the people who loved each other end up in the same room again. We say till we meet again like it's a certainty. Like it's a return ticket. Nobody tells you it might just be two words thrown into a void that swallows them without an echo.
I dream about you still. Not often. But when I do, you're always just leaving a room I've just entered; a door swinging shut, your laugh trailing off down a hallway that has no end and no beginning, just more hallway, more doors, all of them closed, none of them yours, and I run and run and wake up with my hand outstretched and my throat raw from calling your name into nothing.
I go quiet sometimes, mid-sentence, mid-laugh, because I remember that you're not going to text me back tonight. That you're not going to text me back any night. That the last "talk soon" I ever sent you is still sitting there unread, and it will sit there unread forever, a small blue lie glowing on a screen you will never look at again.
People say they're in a better place. They say you'll see them again. They say it so easily, like it costs them nothing, the way we used to say our line. I used to say it too, to other people, at other funerals, before I understood. Now I know what it actually is. It isn't a fact. It's a dare. A dare to keep loving someone across a distance you cannot measure, cannot map, cannot even be sure exists on the other side.
So here is what I have left, since certainty was taken from me along with you:
I go on saying it anyway.
Not because I know it's true. I don't. I may never know. I might die not knowing, the way you died not knowing, the way maybe everyone dies not knowing, reaching for a hand that might not be reaching back.
I say it because stopping would mean I've let you go all the way. Because as long as I keep saying it, some foolish, stubborn, wrecked part of me is still standing at that grave, still refusing to leave, still choosing to believe; against the whole silent, indifferent universe; that somewhere, impossibly, you can still hear me.
Till we meet again.
I don't know if we will.
I'm going to keep saying it like we might, for exactly as long as it takes me to stop breathing too; because that is the only kind of faith I have left, and it is the only kind of faith I have ever needed: not the kind that's sure of the answer, but the kind that keeps calling your name into the dark anyway.