Over the weekend a family member died. It wasn't unexpected, but it's still not easy. The worst is over for her now and she is at peace. Once death occurs, it is not so much those who are dead who struggle with death so much as those left behind. The one I feel the most grief for is her husband, as they had no children, so how does he get through this alone?
Image courtesy of @ridor5301
She wasn't the only one in the family with a terminal diagnosis, so we expect to have news of another death before the year is done. Then we hold out hope for my mother-in-law that she will continue to heal from her cancer.
I started writing this earlier this year and we've since had two more deaths in the family. The expected one was my mother-in-law’s other sister, so she lost them both within a few months, while undergoing treatment for what we all expected to be a terminal cancer. It had spread to her lymph nodes and that's usually something that signifies end of life, yet amazingly her treatment is complete and she is essentially cancer free. We joked that it's all the other medication she's had pumped into her over the years for her rheumatoid arthritis and, more recently, heart condition.
Incidentally, none of these deaths were from Covid, although the second was registered as such because they had put her on a Covid ward. She had dementia and kept wandering out in the cold improperly dressed, leading to pneumonia, so perhaps that's why she was put in a Covid ward. It meant that she couldn't be washed down and dressed for the funeral and the family couldn't have an open casket for her.
The other death was my dad's younger brother. He'd been living with COPD for years and still didn't stop smoking or drinking, so I guess he did well to make it to 70. He and my dad were close, so despite knowing it was coming it still hit him pretty hard initially. We're in Australia and, due to Covid, are currently not allowed out of the country, so my dad couldn't go to him as his condition worsened and he can't be with his sisters now as they work through this loss. They won't be having a proper funeral, as that wasn't what my uncle wanted, but the reality is that funerals aren't for the dead, they're for the living left behind. They are a part of our grieving process.
Do we fear death because we only know the absence of life when someone has died? Our experience is that they are gone, absent, into nothingness. Do we fear that for ourselves, that we will just cease to exist? I know that at one point I did, but what I fear more now is the death of those closest to me, leaving me to be alone to deal with life.
Death is a fact of life, something we all must come to terms with at some point. Yet too often we allow our fear of it to interfere with living our best life. We give up freedoms and even take freedom and dignity from others in order to drag that life out a bit longer, for our own sakes.
Recently a friend’s grandmother died. She was 104 and ready to go, but her pacemaker kept bringing her back for a little longer. Ideally she'd have liked to go peacefully at home where her daughter was caring for her, but as her daughter is in her 80s the extra care needed and stopping up at night was becoming too much and she ended up having to put her in a care home for her last few weeks. She was in such discomfort that the family actually asked if it would be easier for her to have her pacemaker switched off, but this would have apparently put her in more discomfort. She adored her grandmother and in one way wasn't ready to be without her, but she also had a huge respect for her grandmother's own wishes.
Then my friend's father has Parkinson's disease and while he's managed it very well in order to keep himself active enough to live reasonably, I think both he and his daughter are concerned about the point where he no longer has any control of his body and would wish to pass in dignity before that point. Recently she's been posting petitions on Facebook to legalise voluntary euthanasia, with these two experiences in mind.
Where there is life, there is death and the more life there is, the more death there inevitably is. No place is this more apparent than in our rainforests. Life there is so abundant, that if any one species were to get out of hand, it could be fatal for the whole ecosystem. For every insect species there is a deadly parasitic fungus that predates on them to help keep balance. The type that takes over their minds and causes them to go as high as they can before they die so that the spores can burst out of them and spread as far as possible.
So with death being inevitable, should we live in fear and hide away to avoid it for as long as possible, or do we live our best life knowing that when it's our time it's our time? Of course, without a healthy fear of death and a desire to continue living, our species would die out, but at some point we all have to make our peace with our mortality.
As I get older, I'm finding it easier to be at peace with death. It has likely come with experiences, both good and bad. It has come at my lowest points when I'd rather death than continuing such a miserable existence. It's come at those times where I lacked purpose in life and I have realised that in order to truly live a happy life we need purpose... but that leads down another avenue of thought, so I'll leave this one here.