Content warning: spoilers for the song of achilles, as well as discussion of suicide and death.
Halfway through chapter fifteen of The Song of Achilles (2011) by Madeline Miller, I was forced by my own heart and hand to put the book down for a break. It hurt far too much. A reminder of the death I ran from, only to end up back in its arms.
I haven’t picked up the book since, and in this way, I live with the reality of love still alive; still blossoming before each other in the way it once was for me. I retreat to the stolen quotes I’ve highlighted-the passages that remind me of him. I’m not sure when I’ll dare to touch this book again, or dive back into the slow drawl of written death. I don’t want to see their future or the possibility of grace after the fall. There isn’t any grace here. In watching them come together, I don’t think I can watch them part.
Our goddess of the moon is gifted with magic, with power over the dead. She could banish the dreams, if she wished (p. 25).
Nights are some of the hardest times, I have always felt that way. Lately, I’ve found myself waking early in the morning with a racing heart and sweat-covered sheets. In an instant panic, I wish the moon would show mercy on me.
As if he heard me, he smiled, and his face was like the sun (p. 47).
Initially, I engaged in this text to seek a semblance of similarity between my grief and Patroclus’; to find an understanding of grief that I could grasp when I couldn’t understand my own. I had long forgotten how visceral words can be, in the midst of finding my grief advice in wiki how articles and subreddits. In Patroclus’ fall into Achilles’ circle, the book began to rock my sense of stability. How could I find my story in pages written a decade before?
And perhaps it is the greater grief, after all, to be left on earth when another is gone (p. 84).
I struggle greatly with the concept of grief. I detest the notion that we grieve those who are alive when there are many long gone to be mourned first. It is the greater grief, after all, to be here while he is gone.
I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me (p. 102).
Patroclus hung onto the hope of a forbidden future for as long as he could. Devoting myself to someone dead doesn’t feel nearly as absurd as I thought once I found myself in it.
I would know him in death, at the end of the world (p. 134).
I think this line spoke to me so much because I came to it after his passing. His favourite movie focused on the heroic death of a kingdom’s saviour, and the love that never needed to be said between him and his. These words rang in my ears long after I read them. His death was such a shock to my core that his face is painted in the forefront of my mind. Surrounded by the mess, I knew him at the end of his world. I knew him then, and I’ll know him forever.
When I reached the following pages in chapter fifteen of The Song of Achilles, my heart dropped into my chest. Patroclus stood in the face of imminent death, reflecting each fear I held within my own heart off of him and back towards me. When he pulled Achilles close, I longed to no longer feel the cold bruises left in his absence. As the words sunk in, so did my stomach, and then the tears began to fall. They were not slow, more like the release of a dam that had been held in for far too long.
Grief swelled inside, choking me. His death (p. 167).
The next few pages tore through me. The swelling of the heart, the blistering of the eyes, I know it all too well. Grief has choked me since the day I first lost my father. It swells and swells, pushing through my veins and coming up my throat until it’s everywhere. I’ve never known grief any differently. It has always choked me.
When he died, all things swift and beautiful and bright would be buried with him (p. 167).
And they did. I swear, for a month after he passed, the sun didn’t come up. There was a constant rainfall, mourning loudly for him. Whenever someone cried for him, the rest of the world did too.
He was spring, golden and bright. Envious Death would drink his blood and grow young again (p. 168).
I hate death. It is envious and gripping and hard and darker than anything I’ve ever seen before. Death has never been described so accurately, but as an entity that rips energy from the living to keep its own breath.
I would follow, even into death (p. 168).
I had to stop here. This is where our stories part, where I wasn’t there for the blood and the fire. I didn’t see the long nights, as I barely even recognized the turmoil. I thought long and hard about following him into death-I still do. Akin to Patroclus, I knew he had made a mistake. I cannot follow him somewhere he should have never gone.
I cannot say when I’ll pick up The Song of Achilles again. Perhaps I need to heal much more before I consume the death of a love story, especially one as poignant as this. I can say that before this book I never believed feelings and emotions were universal. I held the belief that everyone’s experiences with grief are so different, and while that is in part true, death might just be death at the end of the day. Maybe it creates the same hole in all of us, and if one can mend that hole, I can maybe begin trying to mend mine too.
You must not go (p. 167).
I never wanted you to go. No one did. In the end, though, that doesn’t matter, does it?