(A note from me),
I hope you’re doing exceptionally well. It’s been an interesting last week or so.
I thought I’d write about death today (because, you know, it’s Monday…).
Over the past few months I’ve known a number of people who lost someone close to them. There’s no real manual to get through it. At least that’s my own experience, and different deaths are different.
I can’t really say anything that’ll help in the immediate. No words will help. But I this is for what happens after the immediate. In the months and years after. Because when someone loves you that doesn’t just vanish. It’s very much inside of you. So I pulled from my own life to write about some of that.
Have an excellent day and stay safe out there,
Greyson
Loss Of Life Does Not Mean Loss Of Death
The sound of oxygen forced from a machine.
Forced through a tube.
Forced into lungs.
My father’s chest inflated, his entire torso rising. Lifting from his bed, as if something from within wanted out. Wanted to be let free. His life. His soul
Click.
His chest slumped down as his lungs decompressed. As his soul rested before another attempt.
Numbers on a screen next to his bed fluctuated. I didn’t understand the numbers, other than they weren’t good.
More sounds. More noises. More beeps and clicks and pumps and chimes. Death was noisy. An orchestration of instruments practicing different songs into a gurgled mess.
Click.
In the corner, a nurse did something with a monitor. Maybe she adjusted it. Or maybe she found it easier to deal with the sounds of machines over the sounds of family members losing one of their own.
I couldn’t blame her. That’s why I was there, in that room. Watching my dad’s chest violently inflate. It came easier than listening to my grandmother cry.
I interrupt the concerto of hospital machinery with a sound of my own. A question. I ask her what my father’s chances are. I felt dumb asking it. Felt like something out of a drawn-out soap opera. I knew the answer. The answer she wouldn’t give.
“It’s hard to say,” she said.
I think I wanted to begin mentally preparing myself. Like seeing headlights of an oncoming semi with enough time to straighten my safety belt. Not much could prepare for what happens when the road of life continues as another’s ends. But while life might end, the love created during it will continue on.
Hope In The Emptiness
There’s an emptiness in death, and yet it’s so much more than that. A feeling of hollowness, as if everything from within your body suddenly vanished, leaving nothing more than a shell. A cast of flesh and hair.
And yet there’s something there. It’s just so hard to feel it. The swirl of emotions and feelings twisting inside throughout the moments leading up to the loss of someone, and the stronger, more violent swirls of what happens after. The planning and the arrangements and the discussions nobody ever wants to have and the shaking hands and hugging strangers who apparently knew the person lost.
But that person is never truly lost. And like the swirl of water down a drain, there’s moisture left behind. There’s feelings. There’s hope. It’s just far easier to focus on what’s no longer there than what remains.
It’s the focusing on what’s gone that hurts. The conversations that’ll never take place. The questions never asked. The dinners now canceled and the movie nights now abandoned. These are the obvious things lost. But what’s important is to soak in what remains.
Love.
The love they offered you remains as strong as ever. It didn’t go anywhere. Death is not a vacuum, pulling with it everything that person gave during their life. They loved you. They cared for you. That isn’t ripped away from you when the person is no longer around. It simply stays right there with you, forever.
Feeling A Presence
Have you ever felt the presence of someone, even though they weren’t there? Perhaps you’re at the mall and someone with the same perfume walks past. Or there’s a line in a TV show you absolutely know a certain someone would laugh at. There could be times where you’re in bed and it’s almost like they are there with you, arm around you. The person doesn’t need to be there for you to feel them. For you to know you are loved.
The gift of love will remain with you long after someone is gone. A gift you can always open because you don’t need the giver to be present to experience it. Sometimes it just takes some time for the swirling emotions to settle after someone passes on. There’s so much going on in the mind to focus on what remains. Because it is so much easier at times to focus on what’s gone. What we’ve lost.
I probably spent the most time inside my dad’s room at the end. As more family and friends collected in the waiting room, I remained in his room. I don’t think it was all that comforting to stay there. The visual of my dad being pumped full of air imprinted into my memory.
The push of oxygen. The attempted escape of his soul, no longer in need of the body. And yet when the doctor brought us all together to say they couldn’t do anything else. That they would take him off the breathing machine and let him go, I didn’t join my family in the room. I stayed outside. I’m still not sure why. Perhaps I was afraid of what would happen when the machines stopped. When his lungs compressed one last time. When the machines were turned off with a single button.
Click.
I wish I had a good answer for that, but I don’t. I wish I hadn’t spent as much time focusing on what I’d lost and instead thought about what remained, but I didn’t.
Everyone reacts to and experiences the loss of life differently. You react differently from me. And yet, in the end, the loss of life doesn’t mean the loss of love.
It’s still with you. The love given to you remains and is there for you to draw from whenever you need it. It’s enough to give you strength. To lift your spirits. My father might have needed oxygen pumped into his lungs. An array of machines to keep him alive. But the love he left remains, and it fills my lungs, my chest, my being fuller than any machine ever could.
Click.