A couple of weeks ago a good friend died. Death is a reality most of us, if lucky, don’t have to experience until later in life. We have no control over how we are going to respond when someone close dies. The emotional roller coaster is unpredictable as emotions erupt to the surface intermittently.
During the four days when my friend was in a coma, I was paying particular attention to my thoughts, feelings and language. The news came just as I was getting ready to visit her. “She is gone,” I was told, then I wept. Earlier that day I was able to say good-bye to her, but I thought I’d have more time with her that evening.
I realized that I don’t like hearing “passed away” or “moved on” or even “in a better place”. If we just said that a person died, would it really change how we reacted? Does softening the language to saying ‘passed away’, “gone” really make it easier to accept? yet, as I spoke to individuals after her death, I found that I was using those same words and never once used the word dead, death, or died.
Words are powerful. But, if the words mean the same thing why is it the emotion they trigger is different depending on the delivery?
Good intentioned people come up to me and softly say, “sorry for the passing of your friend”. I want to shout back, she didn’t just pass, she died. No longer a person. I will never hear the sound of her voice, or feel her hugs. But I bite my tongue and graciously accept their condolences.
The word “passing” sounds like a flexible word; that maybe she could “pass” back this way. As though it is not concrete. Word play.
However, my brother who is also a Buddhist was the one person who I could talk to about my friend’s death in plain language. I found that by speaking plainly, using the right words about her death with him actually helped me process my grief.
Interestingly, I also had a great conversation with her widower. He spoke about how he felt immediately after she took her last breath. He said her body was empty. He leaned over her and gently closed her eyes and kissed her on the forehead. He said his relationship with her changed; she was no longer his wife, he was now the caretaker of her body.
His last words, good-bye...My wife, My life, touched me deeply.
Amazing that no comment has been posted on this topic. I think it is perfectly written. Death is a part of life and there is nothing we can do other than accept this truism.
ReplyDeleteYes, it is very painful when somebody close to one dies but life goes on. Millions die every week, possibly every day sometimes. It's just the way things are.
I shed a tear last week when Vicky, whose blog "Nolly Posh Dreaming" died after a long battle with cancer. I'd never met this lady other than thru her blog. But I truly admired her courage and spirit. She went thru hell at times. Her medication kept her going for a few years but then her immune system gave up the struggle.
I feel that it might have been easier for all concerned had her death come a little earlier and her suffering dies with her.
We should care for those we love and when we eventually lose them we can grieve, weep, and then feel glad that we've had the privilege of knowing and loving them whilst they lived.
Sorry for your loss is, perhaps, a gentler way of comforting somebody who has experienced the death of a friend, relative, lover, spouse - or even a friend living in blogland.
This is touching. When I die, I want people to simply say, she died or she's dead. That is what it is.
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