Sink Into the Weeds, Edgar Boy

We stand here - today tonight - to honour our good boy Edgar, in all the glory of his name. We stand here, from across the country, the sea, the world, to watch him quietly dissolve.

Patting strangers' backs, crying in anonymous arms, we are brought together by our devastating loss; for your loss is colossal, Edgar, your absence is incredible and your death is mesmerizing - with it fall all principles of childhood innocence, without you every illusion of order is healed.

Our darling Edgar, beautiful angel, the personification of good values, conjectured concepts, fantastical beliefs: honesty, integrity, and - stupid stupid - faith. Unchanged by disappointment you were, my child, always rising with that smile, bleeding heart in hand, and you'd shout 'See, I'm unharmed!' just to be stabbed once again.

And you loved - the world cries for that love - like New York taxis drive, and football stadiums yell, and sequoias fall. You loved pain and happy the same; ease and hardship as gently, and hoped not for reciprocation - the world will never dream of understanding -, but for it all to be cosmically fair.

At your funeral, perfect Edgar, are all the beasts in this universe, and we cry for the beacon of light which faded away unjustly, precociously, and without sharing its secrets. How will another Edgar rise, if your very idea is already flickering?

We've built legends of your death, something to you by. We all witnessed it, and no one thinks of asking how that's possible. The cities claim you had fallen off the highest building, and curse God for not giving you flight; the villages tell stories of your quiet disappearance - you wandered into the woods, ominous silence all around, and never came back out; the coast says you were eaten by sharks, and when only your ribcage was visible above the water, the fishermen swear they saw through your bones a heart in glistening gold.

We hope you'll like our stories, Edgar. We hope we've honoured you. In years to come, your image will only be ed through them, and you'll be divine; now, we all know, privately, that you never were, and you'll never come to be again; your qualities, the innocent love from which you were made, are gone - slipped off the face of the world, driven by petrol fueled corruption. Your blood, your breath, it was taken, darling Edgar, and this is why you're dead.

Maybe, once we're all dead, and with us the rot which twists round our flesh, another Edgar will be born, all pretty smiles and mangled heart, hopeful eyes and unshattering faith. And our children, lovely beasts that they'll be, will worship this angel boy as we all worshipped you, and all you represented.

But for now, the light is gone, and we all bid you goodbye. Sink into the weeds and rest in peace, Edgar Boy, for the love by which you were defined is nothing at all anymore.

#AWC