How Death Will Come To You and Us.

How Death Will Come To You and Us.

I am fascinated by how relationships transform as people move in and out of one anothers lives. I came across an old photograph and was struck by this idea: the story of a woman contemplating the changes in her life and how she will live always anticipating the death of someone who was once close to her but is now far removed. The digital age often means that though we are protracted from one another, we are never fully removed from the circles of relationship that connect us.

 

Sometimes I see your photograph and wonder how Death will come to you.  Once, when we lived around each other I worried about what you ate and how you drank. I fussed over your posture and lack of concern for fibres. Fibres to keep you warm, woven to cover your skin from the elements. You never wore enough clothes in winter.

You had that one navy fishermans sweater, with look-a-like suede patches on your elbows. You wore it with those black jeans that swooped over your non-existent backside. It’s a trade-off, I suppose, for those long legs. Your toes, long and sparsely covered with hair, poking through the sandals you profusely expounded upon. You have always chosen the strangest idioms to be passionate about. You are still a curiosity in that way, I suspect. Ranting about finding the perfect fit, as if it was some revelation.

Oh, yes, that’s it. You have a gift for making the mundane into a revelation. That’s why I always enjoyed you, being around you even on the fringes of a conversation you were orchestrating.

It makes sense to think of you as a conductor, commanding the music by script and form with your movement and sheer presence; a force of will on the earth. I wonder about your body now as it ages, your shoulders that must fall even further forward. You always curved yourself in to type, or cut or do anything with your hands. You have always had this way of wrapping yourself entirely around an activity; until it lost your attention. I wonder if you have slowly suffocated your hips and lungs from fully functioning.

I see your face through other people’s eyes now. They capture you in fleeting splashes of light; in cities I once traveled before I knew you. They frame you walking those streets as if they are your own, but you don’t really care for possessions. I think even now, you probably care mostly for the objects you’ve made symbols of this new man you’ve become. A notebook and a beard are like weapons of war for you.

But I see you truly; the proud tilt of your hips tipping your belly forward. Sometimes I wonder if you are eating anything to sustain your endless body. It is long and lanky but when you stand still you make remarkable curves. There is nothing soft about you but you curl around the atmosphere and air you breathe. You are rebellious in your being; for the sake of it. Or, I should say – you were. I remember that you were.

I shouldn’t presume to know such things now. That body and those eyes I have stared at, fought with and known for a dozen years; I wonder how it will decay? I no longer observe you daily so each glimpse is like the passing of an age between, you change so much. You age before me and my reflection ages too, but the sight of myself does not shock or rattle me. I wonder now if our character can change as quickly as our exterior? We change so much when we are young and it leaves no mark upon us and then we collapse into middle age. Do our bodies simply begin to catch up with the people we have become?

How will Death come to you? I wonder what it will be like to walk past your coffin. Or will there be a plaque that signals where your ashes are spilled into the ocean or air? Air, I think although you professed to love the ocean so. If there is a funeral, I wonder where I will sit and how far back before I drift into the shadows.

Your wife, as beautiful then as now, will probably say carefully chosen words in her soft voice. Her tears will be fresh and new. Mine will be decades old and dry, they may not even fall. I’ve been wondering for such a long time how Death will find us, my grief already feels ages old. Oh, how I grieve you, bright light. You are a wonder to me still. I miss the smell of you in the room; leather and musk and determination.

I hope it’s quick. I don’t want to hear of your decay coming slowly by protracted illness. It’s all so ungraceful at our age, to go slowly from infection. No, I prefer to think of that hardened fat from late night burgers laden with bacon and extra cheese snapping at your arteries and taking you quickly. I always worried about how you ate. I hope that it comes to some good and spares you the indignity of hospitals and 16 pill-a-day regimens.

I couldn’t bear to hear of you slowly fading from the earth. You should at least, in this one thing, be definitive. It always took you so long to commit to anything, you can do this for us, at least. Go quickly and follow through, don’t leave us wondering. Death may at last, be the one thing that unveils you and forces you to be true.

Yes, I wonder how Death will come to you, and then to Us. I have been waiting so patiently to say goodbye. You’re barely over the cusp of 40 years. The scales are about to tip, you know. By this time next year, you’ll have been gone from my side longer than you stayed. What a curious and puzzling thing. I do not think about your dying or your pain or your absence, but I wonder how, how will it come to be? Perhaps it is because we are a story; a book. Someone has crept in and torn out Chapter 19.

Chapter 20 is some lesson, some goodness or inheritance you leave behind. The meaning for those that will know you at the end, but I have known you up til now.  I have not found the meaning yet.  In death you’ll be revealed at last, but people are always too kind then. Still I want to know how it goes and what they say, when they know at last what I know.

Yet, sometimes I feel you curled around me – shoulders slumped forward, legs tilted into my hips and your hands close to my face, as if I am a thing that requires your entire attention. When I see your photograph, there is a moment of claustrophobia before I remember that you have unwrapped yourself. The bonds are cut so I breathe and regain myself.  I remember what it was like to be the centre of all that chaos and energy in the world and what it is like to watch from a distance.

Your photograph sometimes changes, the streets a different version of the city you are in. Your countenance is the same. Your eyes still sharp, watching and anticipating. I see you hungry for what you will wrap yourself around next. I remember that look; I wonder how Death will come to you and if you will look Death in the eye before you wrap yourself around it, the sole focus of your attention; counting how you could make dying an achievement too.

 

A Conversation About Dying.

A Conversation About Dying.

I am surrounded by people who are dying. Some, slightly removed. Some I look in the eye every day. It appears common that there are two responses to terminal diagnosis, after the shock, grief and anger that is normal and healthy.

The first seems to be the most common: an heroic approach to hopeful expectation of medical miracles, an overwhelming belief in the power of positive thinking. A hopeful optimism about ‘living life to the full’, as if in defiance of the diagnosis.

The second, less common, also seems hopeful, at least to me. A hopeful pragmatism, a leaning into what it might mean to die well.

It seems to me that most of the western world is afraid of dying. Not of death, but of the process of dying. It’s the unavoidable conclusion we all face, regardless of spiritual beliefs, that the breath will end, the body will cease the function, the mind will close and the end of this life will come.

That last breath is just that. The end will come in a moment, a rattling breath held between long pauses until the pause becomes the final cadence. It’s the journey to those last seconds that we resist and pull against.

Only the Good Die Young
It’s hard not to feel the tragedy of life ending for people in their prime. Those who are still enjoying the fragrance of youth, the romance of leisurely weekends or the thrill of newborn days. Worse still, the tiny ones for whom life is swept away before it’s barely begun.

Maybe there is a hard truth in here; we’ve come to expect that life is some we’re entitled to, rather than a fragile, sometimes fleeting gift.

I feel the pull of injustice and fury, those new parents who face leaving the world before their children have a chance to know them. Those who die from preventable disease create the same response in me – but they are faceless, my friends are not.

Is it possible though, that we could be happy about dying? That we could communally accept death as a healthy process and engage in meaningful grief, acceptance and peace?

The Myth of Cure

We can cure some diseases. We can ease the symptoms of some viruses. We can prevent some illnesses from their drastic effects. But humanity, science and medicine has many limitations.

We cannot cure all maladies, and we absolutely cannot cure Death.

So when we talk about medicine, we talk about prolonging life. We rage, we fight, we strive for life – but we cannot cure Death. In fact, Death is necessary. More necessary that we often like to admit, but without it there can be no inheritance.

Death is a process of seasons; all of which are vital. Death is not a disease, death is not to be cured.

The Ideology Of Dying

Perhaps, Death is to be lived. As much a thriving, growing, seeding process as the seed that is buried in the earth to be transformed into something new. The pumpkin seed bears no resemblance to it’s fruit until you cut within it. Yet, life in one must cede in order to provide sustenance to the other. So in dying, purpose can be fulfilled as sweetly as in living. We just need to consider that dying well is in fact, an act of life.

The Theology Of It All

Inevitably, it seems that it’s hard to talk about the end of life without engaging in some belief or another about what happens after that.

It’s funny to me, that some people can talk about what people don’t deserve. The idea that someone could believe in a God who thinks some people do deserve a death while their children are in infancy, or a long, protracted suffering. Similarly, those who have the audacity to proclaim that death is something we determine worth by.

It’s a strange kind of grief that accepts the death of one, more easily than another and claims that as some sort of fairness or justice, by merit of what one deserves. Conversely, the phrase ‘if anyone deserves a miracle, it’s you’ sickens me. How disconnected from reality are we, if our idea of comforting words is such a false and futile statement?

You see, we’re still – Christian, Atheist, Muslim, whatever – susceptible to viewing Death as punishment, the unexpected ending, rather than what it is.

Death is the final season, the closing bell. It comes in all sorts of shapes and forms. It used to come sooner, often quicker. Now, we hold out the value of life above the value of a good death. We fight to hold onto days of dulled pain, for a shot of more time.

But time is only worth what you give it. Maybe we spend too much time waiting for life to get good before we start living. Then we rage against Death, when that’s as much part of living as anything else.

Times Past

More, more, more. It used to be that women sent their husbands to war with the hopes of their return. Nowadays, we scramble for text messages throughout the day.

Imagine if the modern-day long distance romance had to wait on airmail or sea delivery instead of digital audio, email and video calling? We’ve become used to the luxury of accessible time. Being able to connect with people more often, more easily. When we want to.

That’s the luxury we can’t bear to be separated from. Death remains as resolute as ever. No matter how many text messages, instagrams, blog posts, Facebook updates or coffee dates – when  Death comes, connection is over.

It’s connection that we crave – connection that tells us, reminds us we are living indeed. No wonder we fight and rage against death. But still Death comes. So it should.

We’ve come to crave connection and scream ‘Unfair!’ when Death comes to take it from us, when we should be more interested in better endings.

 

What The Hell Just Happened…

What The Hell Just Happened…

We were just kids walking to school, skipping classes, drinking too much Coke in the weekends and talking about small things as if the world depended on them. We believed the world would depend on us. We were well-intentioned, no matter how we played on the edges of darkness and clung to one another in the chaos of adolescence. We held on to one another with a fervour. Somewhere within we knew that innocence was rushing from us like the tide escaping the shoreline. We longed for our freedom but had no idea what ‘real-life’ would bring.

We were unprepared – no fault of our parents, our school system, our religious institutions or lack of. It wasn’t television, the dawning of the internet age or the influence of sex, drugs’n’rock’n’roll. We were unprepared because that’s how you must be, to enter the fray of life. Stepping up onto the diving board, if you knew what was ahead you would never do it. So we closed our eyes and jumped, hoping everyone was just as scared as we were and trying not to show it.

But that was only yesterday, and what the hell just happened?

We gave birth to babies, kept some and gave some away; lost husbands, boyfriends, broke a limb, broke a back.

Suffered cancer, fought cancer and won, fought cancer and lost.

Stayed in one place for 2 years not leaving the house, didn’t stay anywhere more than 2 weeks, didn’t call anywhere home.

Tried to have babies and lost them, tried to have babies and couldn’t make them, tried to have babies then hated them, tried to have babies but couldn’t find a lover.

Found love in the arms of men, of a woman, of a few men and women.

Called ourselves feminist, traditionalist, reformist, non-conformist, modern, post-modern, wouldn’t be called anything or put in a box.

We tried over and over to find hope, until it was hopeless and then we succumbed to depression, succumbed to life and to death.

We died in our waking and living the same old thing, day in and day out wishing we were dead and some of us just died. Drove a car into a cliff face, never woke up. Drank too much vodka and drove, never woke up. Drank just enough wine to wash down the pills, never woke up. Tried to slice ourselves open but that never took, while some of us starved and others threw up. Some of us heartbroken and fear never recovering, others so strong now we hate ourselves and everyone. Some of us just lived but never woke up.

Some of us divorced, divorcing or cheating in public, in private – all of us still lonely somehow, even as we find ourselves in the places we never expected to be. Good or bad, who knows, who cares – we’re still fifteen and holding on to ourselves. Trying to let go and leap, trying to hold on to someone else just enough to let them be loved and be loved ourselves but not enough to kill it, the love in our hearts, the love in our life.

And we have become well-practiced at living, even when it doesn’t feel real but there is so much that feels so good, that we live like the breath is being stolen from us. Live, live, live screams our blood.

Some of us burying children, marriages, husbands, parents. Some of us nursing each other. Some of us dreaming still, looking forward to next beginnings, some of us waiting for the first beginnings and what the hell just happened? Live, live live screams our blood.

It was yesterday and we were jumping with our eyes closed into Life, that we had been hurtled towards by Time and everyone, hurtled ourselves into it and now we are dying. Some of us have died.

So all the time, we are hurtling towards death and it flies at us in the minutes and hours. Our lovers, our children, our parents, our siblings. By car, by disease, by water, by choice and I do not know if we are ever at peace.