“I envy the dead.”

„I envy the dead“, I say to my witch as we open up another bottle of wine. „I think they are better off.“ My witch does not respond. „And you know, ever since I have also lost someone in this pandemic, I feel like I am entitled to say so.“

Layla just nods, while fighting with the cork.

We drink too much, and outside there is a blizzard, locking us up even more.
Also, I broke my phone the same month that I have to pay tuition fee. This kind of bad luck just makes me scream. I am completely broke and I cannot even call someone.

„What if I suddenly need a Doctor in the middle of the night?“, I say.
„You won‘t“, my witch responds, and I know that she is right.

But still. Being without a phone in the middle of lockdown meant a new kind of fear.
„I envy the dead“, I repeat. „I think they are better off.“

Layla seems to be hurt by these words, but I do not care. My witch would have to take it.

„I think my grandmother is better off“, I continue shivering. „In general, I think it is okay for a 90 year old woman to fall asleep in her bed in her home. But you know what hurts?“
Layla takes a deep breath.
„That she was so alone, the year before she died.“
More wine …
„After my grandfather died, she got ill immediately, but did her best to recover. She still needed a lot of help, and so she invited every nurse and every physical therapist for a cup of coffee, and they got used to it and always stayed for half an hour afterwards and told her about their children, and she even knit socks for their children. My grandmother was the only one in my family that you could have quiet moments with and talk to. Even when I was sixteen and had a piercing, she would sit down with me and look at experimental photographs that I had taken.“
Layla handed me another piece of chocolate and I was shivering again. „I hate it that I have not seen her in over a year and now she is dead.”
More chocolate. The apple-hazelnut one that she had loved so much. “And I hate it that she has also not seen my cousin for so long, or anyone having a coffee with her and not wearing a fucking mask.”

I hate that people die while having received one more slap into the face all year.

Even my witch needs to distance herself from me when I talk about the dead like this.

And I … I feel a certain sparkle. This hunger for life, that I have described so often. And I want to have all the goodbyes and all the last times that we are never going to get.

I want to use the time left but can’t.

“Sometimes, we just survive”, Layla says.