Death

A new friend of mine has written a book about death. For more than a year, she followed the partipants in a class about death that  is so popular, there is a three-year waiting list.

Like most in our culture, I was always afraid of death. It’s scary and depressing and I don’t want to think about it except at Halloween when we wrestle it into submission with cartoons and costumes.

I know why there is a three-year waiting list for that class. Because the certainty of death and the uncertainty of when it will happen is a godsend. The death class is a class about life.

I’ve always loved being alive, but Dennis’ death connected me with a passion for my own life I’d never felt before.

We don’t decide to be born. We are born. We live. We move from one day to the other. Routine takes over. Dreams are delayed. Feelings frozen.

In the hours after Dennis died, I know part of me went with him, maybe seeing him safely home. Maybe because I couldn’t let go.

I know why some married couples die within weeks or months of each other. Because your soul bleeds out.

I remember the half-alive state.

You wander, glassy-eyed and weak. Pliant, confused. You can’t cry because you, too, are dying. People call it shock, but it’s really your soul standing at a crossroads.

After hours, days, months, it happens. You cry. Like a child fighting for the first gasp of air. The gulping, gut-deep cry. A scream of survival. You thrust yourself back into life.

As much as you love this soul who left, you won’t, by God, join them yet.

The more you cry, the more you grip and pull yourself back.  Friends ask what they can do and they can do nothing but stand on the side of the cliff and will you to crawl back up.

This decision is so primal, that it rocks back and forth for the weeks and months that follow. Half of you remains unsure if you want to go on without him.

 I know I was careless at traffic lights. I tripped a lot. I forgot things. I could have become one of the distracted widows who don’t survive this stage of uncertainty.

I’m so grateful the deepest part of me chose life.

I don’t want to die soon, but I don’t fear death anymore. I don’t know if I will see Dennis when I go,  but oh God, how I want to.  And now I know that the human will may be more powerful than we know.