When I was a camp counselor the summer before my senior year of high school, I met a five-year-old girl who told me her grandpa was flying around in the sky. Confused, I asked if her grandpa was a pilot. She shook her head, brows slightly raised and furrowed, perplexed. It occurred to me that she did not understand or know of Death. When I was a child, my parents never shielded me from Death. Death simply did not occur.
The first time Death and I crossed paths, we were quite a distance away. I was eight years old at summer camp when one of the girls in my group announced to our bunk that she would be leaving for the weekend. Her grandfather had died, and she was going to the funeral. My friends and I exchanged our half-assed condolences and continued to talk amongst ourselves. The idea of death was mostly foreign, and her grandfather was irrelevant to our lives. We moved on.
Only few hours later, I began to think of Death. The idea of absence of life started to scare me. For forty-five minutes, Death's presence sent tears rolling down my eyes. I visualized her grandfather’s last birthday, the last time he had dinner, the last time he fell asleep. Waiting in line for the shower, sobbing, I tried to understand how a person could be present in one moment, and then completely gone the next. I was afraid of Death.
Lying in my bed at night as a child, often when I should have been sleeping, I would imagine my parents and grandparents dying. I would visualize my mother coming into my room and saying, “Zoe, your grandma died,” or my dad picking me up at school and saying, “Your mother has gotten into an awful accident and we need to leave.” Death, it seemed, was so far away from me, I was able to use it as a game to scare myself.
Death and I brushed shoulders a few years later when my father’s cousin died from pancreatic cancer. I was fourteen, sitting on the couch watching TV in April when my father came in and sat down on the big chair next to me. “Zoe,” he told me, “my cousin Cliff died yesterday.” His voice a monotone. “I’m sorry, Dad,” I responded, and I think I gave him a hug. Then he left and I continued to watch TV. Very briefly I acknowledged that this man was gone forever and would never be seen again. It felt unnatural to me. Just a few months earlier I had visited him, met him for the first time, and chatted with him as he sat on a lounge chair in his backyard basking in the heat of the sun, eating fresh mangos, commenting on the sounds of the birds above, looking absolutely alive and well.
My grandma always tells me that when the lights flicker on and off in her apartment she shouts, “Hey, Dad, I miss you too, but I’m trying to read!” and I really think that is brilliant. I believe in an afterlife, that souls stay on Earth forever. This came to me when I started watching the TLC show Long Island Medium, in which a woman from Long Island who claims to be able to connect with the dead does exactly that. The idea that people can be gone forever never easily resonated with me, and the show enabled me to find an alternative idea. I am comforted by the concept that even if physical bodies are not still around, a spirit lives on. My discovery of this has greatly affected my thoughts on Death; perhaps I am no longer afraid.
When my great aunt died, Death and I formally met each other for the first time. We shook hands, exchanged formal greetings. I used to visit my great aunt with my family around once a year. Whenever we went to her house, she would feed us stale Cheetos and three-year-old Snickers, and tell us how tall and intelligent we were. When Death took her I once again thought about the absence of life, but I soon realized that I was alone in my thoughts. The conversations amongst my extended family turned quickly from consolations to I Wonder Who Will Get What In The Will. The idea of a vacation to Italy or a new car overshadowed my family’s grievances, but I couldn’t help but think that I would no longer, I could no longer, sit in a sticky Florida apartment eating stale Cheetos and old Snickers with the woman. I would never see her, never hear her frail little voice, or touch her scaly old-person hands, again.
It has come to my attention recently that Death is a cliché. As Stephen Curry wrote in his blog post Death and Cliché, “Death is not the moment for creativity, wit or doing anything out of the ordinary. Death is the ultimate leveler, the ultimate cliché.” There are only so many things to say about Death, or condolences to give out, or phrases to put on a tombstone. When my friend’s mother died from ovarian cancer, I texted her saying, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Cara. Your mother was an incredible woman. If you ever need to talk, I’m here for you.” When another friend’s father died a few weeks later, I texted her saying, “I’m so sorry for your loss, Becca. Your father was an incredible man. If you ever need to talk, I’m here for you.” I cared about
these people, and I was genuine with my condolences, but what else was there to say? Is there another way to compassionately relate to a baffled and dejected person without sounding so banal? How can I refrain from rolling my eyes when I hear the words Heaven gained an angel today or They’re in a better place now?
When my tenth-grade religion teacher died, Death began choking me from behind. I remember vividly the moment I found out. Someone posted a status on Facebook. I was in bed. It was half past ten. I didn’t believe it was her. I told myself someone had made a mistake, was misinformed. Then I saw another post, and another, then four more, then five more. It happened so quickly, I was unprepared. She seemed so immortal. It was strange that she was gone, had vanished into the Unknown. Death whisked her away swiftly and silently and there was nothing I could do about it.
It was the first time Death really gripped me, the first time I was the one grieving, the first time I felt the death was my own to acknowledge and think about. Previously I had simply remembered the faces of the passed for a few moments and believed that was sufficient, but I felt I needed to give more to this loss. But I was faced with a challenge: I didn't know how to mourn. I started writing a letter to the dead woman on my phone, but I finished it hastily, for fear that my method of lamenting was wrong. I grappled with the idea of not grieving at all. What’s the point of being upset about something you can’t change? Perhaps grieving was a waste of time.
In the end, I never decided how to grieve. I cried for a few days, I recalled my fondest memories of her, and Death eventually let go of its chokehold. I moved on; I walked away, the only conceivable thing one can do with Death.