A Conversation about Death

I’ve been told how resilient I am. Resiliency, the power to recover, implies you had something devastating to recover from. Since my husband died, I have been asked many times, in many forms and phrases, the question, “How do you do it?” I suppose it refers to living. Going on. Moving on. As if I had a choice.

Were there times when I wanted to curl up into a ball and die? Of course. But coming from a childhood with a bipolar mother who attempted suicide many times, refusing to live, to go on, was never an option for me. I had to learn at a young age that it was possible to wake up to an empty house, to be left alone. For years, I found it difficult to trust people, to accept that they, too, would not just wander off in the night. The strange thing about life, though, is that reliance on other people is what keeps it going.

My husband loved to laugh and play and dance. He drank up the world—no; he guzzled. He taught me how to taste beauty and brilliance. I relied on him to show me how fun life could be. It was his greatest gift. If I were to somehow give up on life, wasn’t I refusing this gift?

I went to my first Death Café recently. I wasn’t sure what to expect. It’s a free meeting where people are welcome to talk openly about this taboo subject. The fact that we need these gatherings is a statement about how scared our society is of death, of dying, of talking or planning about it. The logical side of me finds this absurd, since it’s the one thing we are absolutely certain of in this life: we will all die. But the widow in me knows how hard it is to accept. We want the magical potion, the miracle cure. We want to stop aching, to stop missing the person who died. But without that pain, where would all the love go? Grief is a form of love.

I am not saying that it is easy to lose a loved one. They are not lost; they are dead. Euphemisms do not help with pain. Whatever you believe happens when we, as human bodies, die, let’s hope they aren’t lost. What helps us to go on living is a mix of memories, poems, prayers, hugs, and tears. As universal as grieving is, it is also incredibly personal. How long it takes to first face people in person, whether or not you stay home or move, if you go back to work or not: all of these decisions are intimate, individual choices.

The best thing to do for someone who is grieving is to simply be there for them. I am here. I am listening. I see you. When the ones left behind are ready to go out into the world and live again, their resiliency, their ability to recover, does not mean they are no longer grieving. It means they are learning to live with the love left behind.