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Meditations on Death & Life

April 26, 2022

“On no subject are our ideas more warped and pitiable than on death. Instead of the sympathy, the friendly union, of life and death so apparent in Nature, we are taught that death is an accident, a deplorable punishment for the oldest sin, the arch-enemy of life, etc. Town children, especially, are steeped in this death orthodoxy, for the natural beauties of death are seldom seen or taught in towns…

But let children walk with Nature, let them see the beautiful blendings and communions of death and life, their joyous inseparable unity, as taught in woods and meadows, plains and mountains and streams of our blessed star, and they will learn that death is stingless indeed, and as beautiful as life, and that the grave has no victory, for it never fights. All is divine harmony.”

-John Muir, from A Thousand-Mile Walk to the Gulf

Two weeks ago I decided to take my boys to see my grandmother, my last living grandparent. I hadn’t seen her since last year, shortly after I was finally fully vaccinated, and thanks to COVID the boys hadn’t been able to see her in several years. She had just celebrated her 90th birthday, and I was happy I would be able to spend even a few minutes with her. Her and my grandfather’s house was the place growing up that, outside my own home, I loved most; It’s where I felt the safest, the most understood, and the most loved.

When we were just about twenty minutes away I got a call that she’d had an accident, and that she was being taken to the emergency room. An hour later I found out she was on a ventilator. By evening we had been told that she was likely never going to be able to come off of it, and that we were staring down a difficult decision. I say “we” as if I had any part in it; I didn’t, but my mom did and the struggle in her voice became the struggle in my own mind.

By some miracle it didn’t ever come down to a difficult decision. Somehow my grandmother began to improve, and a few days later was able to breathe on her own again. She’s still very sick and the reality is that her life, nor ours, will ever be quite the same. The whole experience has had me thinking a lot about grief and death, and life.

Grief. The loss of something; a life, or the life you knew. It’s an odd thing, no? You can be completely prepared for it and yet it can still sneak up on you. My grandmother has been in declining health for several years now and for a while I’ve known that any day I may get a phone call. And yet somehow being thrust into the reality of it felt like a shock. Prepared as I was, it’s still hard to watch it play out. It’s hard to watch the suffering; her own, and ours. And it’s hard to be honest about feelings of wanting that suffering to end, but knowing what that would mean. So many conflicting feelings, each as difficult as the next to process.

But I think the hardest part of it all has been the reality that when she passes, I’ll be the one on deck. There has always been a sense of security, even if only a false one, that as long as my grandparents are alive then my parents are safe because they’re still young. That I’m not there yet. I could almost relax in the knowing that the time when I begin to worry about and take care of them is still a long way away. And in some regards, it is. My parents are far from elderly and both in good health. But this experience brings the realization that I’m now staring down stepping into the role that I’ve watched them fill. And it’s not a pleasant feeling.

The thing is I have what I would consider a healthy relationship with death. I certainly don’t want it to come, for me or anyone else, sooner than it has to. But I’m not afraid of it either. I’ve always viewed it as a natural part of life. Just as grief is proof that love existed, death is proof that life existed. In a way, it’s beautiful.

Of course death still means separation. And the only place in my life I fear separation is as it concerns my children. I think it’s impossible to be a mother and not fear that. But while I’m at peace with the inevitability of all of the separations I’ll likely experience, it’s also hard to be a daughter and not feel anxious about the eventual separation from my parents a bit too.

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