stations of living
February 2, 2015 § 2 Comments
My experience of death has been largely abstract; loved ones who disappeared outside the routine or physical space of my days. My world was small enough that I escaped the nearness of loss; my grief lonely and private.
This year I have watched acquaintances and friends mourn illness and loss in contrasting shades of peace and sorrow. A young mother taken inexplicably early; parents and grandparents lost unexpectedly. In each passing the grief was as tangible as the life within the loss.
As a witness to another’s memories, I am humbled by the fullness of lives that intersect our own. Like passengers on a train to nowhere in particular the details of old joy and passion remind us of our own years, lost enthusiasm and hard-earned personal accomplishments.
I am left wondering which platforms we might revisit and what journeys linger in want of a beginning.
scribblechic 
Like someone said in jest, “death rate is still 100%.” It affects all of us and, of course, at some point, will be us. Morbid, yes, but lately I, too, have been thinking of this. In particular I am constantly drawn to how the funeral industry is perhaps leading us astray. There’s more and more of an effort to shield everyone from death. The word “passed” is used instead of ‘died” for example, and everywhere there are euphemisms, shields. in the end, though, it’s a natural conclusion to life. I, for one, hope that when mine comes, just before it happens I will be of the state of mind that says, “it was done well enough.”
Death is inevitable, a reckless predictability we attempt to elude with efforts that are merely illusions of control. It is the living we must choose consciously and all too often defer to a myth of some predestined consequence of hapless powerlessness. I want there to be no doubt at the end of my days that the life I lead was chosen well and lived fully.