On death, marking an anniversary.

      In my 27 years of life, I have become well acquainted with death. We have met in hospital rooms, on highways, in my sickbeds and bathrooms. The more we meet, the more I get a sense of what he looks like, the faster I recognize him in our next encounter.  The thing about being human, is that we all live like this. We all live, knowing that death is near. We have spent lifetimes and industries attempting to eliminate, outlast, or outrun death, and yet still we see him out of the corner of our eye. Like humans, Death is an endurance predator. He is patient, and will follow until we run out of breath. In the west, our response has largely become an attempt to pretend we do not see him. To flee from any and every reminder of his shadow looming over us, in the hope that perhaps we will be the first to escape, or at least to find peace and fun until our time comes. And yet in order to do this, we must cut out any mention or notion of his reach, including those he has already taken from us. To run faster, we cut away the memories of those who have gone, leaving pieces of ourselves behind. 

    Visible grief is one of the greatest enemies of a life lived free from death. For when we see it, we cannot escape. We are pulled back to the moment of loss, the inescapable feeling of breaking, crashing overwhelming sadness and loss. So, we try to hush, placate, and even celebrate away the darkness, hoping that if we shut the door and leave it outside, we will find rest in forgetfulness. Instead, we only find a feeling of doom hanging over us, as we try to ignore the pounding waves of grief at our front door. The worst part of this approach, is of course, that we will never be able to run so fast and far, or storm proof ourselves sufficiently to escape death, and the grief that must accompany him. At some point, the waves will take down your door, and perhaps you will have done enough to numb yourself that when they come in you will feel little; but that is not without cost. To become stone, immovable and untouchable, is to give up the delicacy of human life and connection. Forgetting those we have lost, and the weight that their lives had, in exchange for the illusion of lightness. 

    In the Silmarillion, JRR Tolkien, describes the creation of mankind: a unique and strange race that followed the beautiful and undying elves. In this mythos, they are given a gift; the ability to live their lives free of the restraints of fate, and then to die, leaving the earth and undying lands behind, going to a place that is known only to the creator, Eru. In reading this for the first time, I felt as if I had been cracked open, unable to understand or flee the thought. Having just lost a friend, the thought of death haunted my every waking moment. To consider the possibility that it could ever be thought of as a gift filled me with anger, and sadness, opening the door and letting the waves wash over me. In the wake of fresh loss, I understood only how humanity would see death as their curse; a force that takes everyone you love, no moment safe, no life long enough to make it more endurable. Yet as I age, I see the beautiful, undying elves and start to understand how they might envy those who can live the life they choose, and then find rest beyond the confines of the world. Repeated loss eats away at you, even before it happens as you watch those whose strong arms you once depended on age and become so frail each additional moment is an unexpected boon. Elves find rest in the undying lands, away from death forever. Humanity is not allowed access, because they have been given rest in a different way, and yet because it is so fast to arrive, and so shrouded in darkness and the unknown, it will never cease to look to us like a curse. 

    The unknowable nature of death seems to be half the battle. As advanced as we think we are, the question of where the light of a person goes after they die is inescapable. You hold the hand still warm, limp in your own, and your brain wants to know where they went. You prepare their body, and as you zip the bodybag over their face, something at your very core yells; are you sure? Maybe they’re only sleeping, maybe even with all the scans, and tests, you got it wrong. Even as your brain tells this voice to be quiet, you can’t shake the feeling that they are not gone forever, that the light beyond their eyes would still be there if only you opened them.

   Losing someone you love, and never getting to see them makes this strange, deep voice even louder. There is a feeling at your core that they must simply be on a journey. Gone beyond cell service, and accessibility, and yet they will return. For accepting that they are gone beyond hope of recall means that every moment lived in the future is one without hope of reunion. That there was a last word, a last hug, a last time hearing their voice and seeing their face warm and alive. That death exists, and has claimed them, and you cannot follow; not with any certainty, and not without leaving those you love with the ocean outside their own door, deafening and inescapable. Accepting their loss means opening the door and letting the waves pour in, even though you are sure they will drown you. 

  Some find comfort and surety in a hope of an afterlife. They hold onto that feeling that those who left their bodies behind aren’t actually gone forever, just for a time. And that one day they will see, and hold, and laugh with them again. I don’t know about that, anymore. What I do know, is genetics. I know that people who once lived, and were greatly loved, passed from memory and sight. And yet I have their eyes. Their nose. Their laugh, and voice, the first to be lost, are found again with me. And they are loved again in me. When I am gone, and there is no one left to remember and love me, I will still be here, in bits and pieces, the best and worst parts of me living on. 

    I don’t know where the people we love go, but I do know that in grief, and in life, they are kept for a moment longer, here with us. That in the ocean of sadness and loss I am assured that they lived, and that their life mattered, if only to me. I miss them, and that is enough.