Death - My Unwelcomed Guest

Don't strew me with roses after I'm dead.
When Death claims the light of my brow
No flowers of life will cheer me: instead
You may give me my roses now! --Thomas F. Healey

Awareness
I have a love and hate relationship with Death, probably more hate than love of course. Being a longtime friend of my family, Death has visited my family many times, especially recently. And he has taught me a few lessons along the way. I loathe to see him when he visits, but I know as I continue through life, he'll ultimately be there for me someday.

When I was seven, my mom thought taking me to the funerals of any and every uncle or aunt she had would help me see how life really is. It probably wasn't that so much, just that she didn't have a baby sitter. She had lost her dad when I was seven, just about the age I was when I lost her recently, so I guess I can now understand why she felt it was important to pay one's respects. How ever you size it up, I can count far more funeral memories than weddings or babies being born at hospitals even before I became a teenager. Many memories of distant relatives peering out at me from their caskets.

Endurance
I don't think Death really got to me until I was in college. Maybe he did and I worked hard to keep it under wraps. Or maybe it was like when any unwelcomed guest shows up to impose on you and you just deal with it while he's there. When I was 24, I lost my dad. In a five year span before that, my two aunts and my last grandparent were dead. Not to mention, the friends I lost to drinking and driving accidents. I got to the point where I couldn't deal with going to funerals, even though for most, I had to. For my dad's, my mom passed out klonopin to me and my sister so that day is hazy to say the best. Some memories are fine to remain fuzzy.

Understanding
As I approach my late 30s, I'm coming to terms with the fact that I'll live out my next decades (I hope) without my parents. A very isolating and sobering thought for me somedays. How do you say goodbye to the two people who brought you into this world when Death takes them so quickly? Both my mom and dad died suddenly. I had just talked to my mom the Tuesday before she had a massive stroke on Thursday. We were planning her next trip to visit me. My dad died from a complication in surgery in the hospital twelve years ago.
My relationship with my mom was much stronger than with my dad. She was my best friend.

We'd talk about anything and everything. And I am so grateful to know that she and I were friends which seemed a more treasured bond than saying just mother and daughter. I could always get Mom to tell me what her deal was when my brother and sister couldn't. Not that we had many family type discussions as such, but when she retired a few years before her death, we did have to work through a few.

I'm coming to terms with the fact too that I have more funerals in front of me. I shouldn't look at it that way and somedays I really don't honestly think such thoughts. But I've resigned myself to knowing that life is all about beginnings and endings. And I'll see Death again, but let's hope for now it's many years out!

Perhaps I'm also thankful Death took my parents so quickly. (This is where the love comes in.) I have several friends who have gone through long illnesses with their parents and they had time to prepare for it, if that's even possible to do. But from the suffering the families have had to endure, it will take many years to rebuild their constitutions I'd venture to guess.

Appreciation
As I go through grieving for my mom and even my dad again, I'm searching for truths and answers in my life now, searching for what it all means and how I can make the most of who I am. I'm reading up on a few eastern religions and focusing on being mindful of how I approach each day. I breathe a lot and try to hold my tongue even more. I love the Zen Buddhism quote by Shirdi Sai Baba, "Before you speak, ask yourself: Is it kind, is it necessary, is it true, does it improve on the silence?"

This is probably the most important lesson Death has taught me, appreciation for those around you, telling the ones you love how you feel about them every day, and knowing all the time how fleeting our existence is in this world we have created for ourselves. I could step out tomorrow and be hit by a truck. Blam, over, done with. Someone else would have to finish out my projects at work. And you know what, that's okay. C'est la vie. That's life.

I don't mean that to sound cold or heartless. Quite the opposite. I now understand that I can't control things beyond myself, not the weather, the universe, the past, the future, none of it. All I have control over is myself, in this moment, in this realm of time.

Resolution
I hope the next time I do met my old friend, I can ride the storm out far better than I did two years ago. I can look him in the eye and say, "Up to your ole tricks again?" And when he turns and casts his eyes on me in silence, I can reply to him and say, "Tell them I love them."
When Mom died, a sudden case of flight took me over. And I know now why; it was really the first time I had lost someone I unconditionally loved, who I thought would never die as odd as that may sound. I think of my husband in that aspect now.

But how odd it is to think that our parents will never die. Or that we'll be okay when that time comes. I mean they get old, right? We're all gonna die, right? But it didn't end up like that for me at all. I was devastated. I stood in that hospital room as we had to decide to take my mom off the life support machines, screaming in my head, praying she'd come back and knowing all along, she was already gone. Had I not had my husband, my sister, brother, and my sister's sons to literally make a circle around my mom, I would have crumpled in a heap of hysteria on the floor.

New Beginnings
It's been during these two years after losing my mom that my focus has shifted to others in my family as well as new friends. My relationship with my sister has deepened. I constantly bother my nephews (I have 3) on myspace. I check in with my brother who works offshore regularly. My husband and I make time for one another in between work. And I strive to keep Mom's memory alive without getting too lost in the past. We talk of her often in my family.

And that blue topaz necklace she gave me when I was 15 is wrapped around my neck. She had said it was a white sapphire when I questioned the lack of dark blue color in it. I was a sassy little teenager and my birthstone is Sapphire for September. I giggle when I think about that now. Blue topaz was her birthstone and somehow it's just fitting that I have a rare white sapphire to treasure, one she tried to pass off as a new stone since she couldn't afford to buy a real sapphire. Because that's what Mom did. She always put us first, even when maybe she didn't need to. And I cherish that necklace now more because of that little story. Thanks, Mom! I love you and miss you!