Guest Blog: Dying

Dying

by Mim (who blogs at www.saidsally.com)

I have not lived a life close to death. My grandfathers both died before I was 10. My grandmothers each passed away when I was in my 20s, both of them after prolonged and wasting illness. When each of them died, I looked at my parents and wondered: How does it feel when your mom dies? What does that grief look like? In both cases, my parents took their mothers’ deaths with cold stoicism that took me by surprise.

Because I expect something to happen when someone close dies. I expect an earthquake that everyone can feel. I expect boulders to push up from under the surface of the earth and create a monument that will stand forever to commemorate that My Loved One died.

I’m thinking about death because a coworker was killed last week, struck by a car on her walk to work. They say she didn’t suffer, and I hope that’s true.  She was a gentle soul who never – and I mean this truthfully, not in a we’re-saying-good-things-about-her-because-she’s-dead kind of way – never said a bad word about anyone, never got impatient, always made the best of what she had. At least while I was around.

The thing that hits me is, this grief business is all about US – these souls still hanging around in their bodies, feeling things, thinking things, eating things. Grief, I think, isn’t about the person who has “moved on.” It is, of course, about learning to live without someone who you took for granted was alive. (…)  read more