Death is part of Life.

When a person is born we rejoice, and when they're married we jubilate, but when they die we try to pretend nothing has happened ~ Margaret Mead



Kathleen with Sophie and Lucie

 Death is a part of life.  It is just as much a part of life as birth is. Pretty much everything else is optional.  Birth and death are universal.  They happen to every single person (and animal) on earth.  No exceptions.  So why do we pretend that death doesn't?  Why is it so hard to face?  Why can't we talk about it?  Birth is beautiful.  Why can't death be beautiful too?  Maybe it is.  How would we know?  Maybe it is the most beautiful thing that can happen to us, yet we live in so much fear of the unknown that we practically deny it exists. 

I am reading a book by Alice Sebold in which she is discussing being raped while a college student.  She discusses how in her church and in her home nobody would use the word 'rape'.  They talked about her incident, what happened to her, her assault, etc., but nobody would use the word 'rape'.  Yet she needed to use the word.  She couldn't accept and move forward from what happened without acknowledging exactly what happened.  It is an ugly word for an ugly thing.  But it exists and I can understand her need to use it, to acknowledge it, to not hide from it.

Most of us are taught manners as children.  We learn to say 'please' and 'thank you'.  We learn not to interrupt and how to eat at a communal table.  We learn how to congratulate.  Why, then, do most of us not learn how to console?  What to say if someone is crying?  I suppose it is because our parents don't know, in fact, when we cry the first thing they do is try to get us to stop.  Big girls don't cry, right?  They don't know because they weren't taught either.  It is a shame, because death is the one sure thing that we will all encounter in life.



The earth cries too.

 And since we don't know how to act when someone else cries, we also try not to cry in front of other people.  We don't want to make anyone else uncomfortable.  So we work very hard in our most difficult times not to offend someone else.  Not to make someone else uncomfortable.  How does this make any sense? 

I notice that among the people I know whose child has died (and there are more than you would imagine), nobody cringes from using or hearing the word.  Death is death.  She died.  After she died.  Before she died.  When she died.  These are common phrases.  Using the word doesn't remind us that they died.  It isn't like we forgot and then hear the word and think, oh yeah, she died, it hurts, I miss her.  It hurts anyway, but having to hide our own pain to spare the rest of the world a little bit of discomfort hurts too.




Too Immense to Understand.




It is ok to cry
It is ok to mourn
It is ok to die
Everyone does

It is ok to hope
It is ok to believe
It is ok to accept miracles
Everyone should


It makes me sad when I hear that someone won't share their hopes and stories of their miracles with others.  The reason, I'm told, is because the cynical and the doubters are compelled to pity rather than awestruck and thankful when they hear these tiny stories of faith.  The 'you-poor-pitiful-thing' look that greets a story of faith and belief in the unknown is so very sad.  


Believe.

 
Sad. 

Not for the person with hope.  Not for the grieving mother who receives the miracle, the sign, the little push from the universe, but for the doubters.  The poor, cynical disbelievers.   They are the ones who deserve pity.

For how will they receive comfort when death touches their lives?