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Death’s Texture

February 22, 2023 by

Loss is something we all face across the years of our life. The circle of life includes the end stage, Death, and we can do nothing to avoid it. We all face Death; it is profound and life-changing for many of us. Death forces us to examine our own lives every single time someone we know dies, whether that person is a casual acquaintance or dearly beloved. Whoever the dead is, we are touched somehow; we look inward despite ourselves.

Death has a texture. Sometimes it is smooth, even comforting. The Death of a loved one after a long illness can be velvet or a long breath released into the night. We are glad for them; they no longer feel pain, and they are no longer suffering. We feel all of this even as we mourn their loss and wonder about the hole in our spirit where they dwelled.

Sudden and unexpected Death leaves you shaken and raw from the inside out. This is the texture of burlap, scratchy and sometimes unyielding; breathing is sometimes forgotten between tears and screams to unhearing ears. Our mourning comes later, after anger and desolation.

As we get older ourselves, we expect Death. We have seen it, some of us more than others. We have buried parents, siblings, friends and even spouses. We have attended the funerals of loved ones and friends. We sent prayers and condolences and too often wondered why them and not us.

We whisper to God a brief prayer to care for those we love. Then we ask again, why them?

Death is the texture of maelstroms and frigid nights, with endless whys.

I am not afraid of Death; I lost that fear many years ago. I am outraged today at the texture and randomness of Death’s choices. I lost another friend this week, someone I have known for nearly fifty years. When I learned of his passing, I felt like silk ropes were choking me. My spirit excised from my body to watch another small piece of me fly even as I couldn’t breathe.

It is strange to run through rapid fire the emotions of sadness, pity, loss, and guilt. Yes, guilt. That peculiar sense of why am I still standing while my friends die around me. My friends who lived normal, even pedestrian lives, while I lived anything but that. Why are my friends dying?

There are no answers to these questions. Mourning includes the questions. Each of us approaches Death and life differently. Death has a particular texture, a feel that cannot be easily defined. Each death must be felt in its own time and given its place in our spirit so that we can mourn as we will, not as others expect of us. No one can tell us the ‘right’ way to mourn a friend’s or loved one’s passing, any more than they can tell us the texture of Death as we feel it.

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Untethered

February 21, 2014 by

DP821347First Mother – biological mother gave birth to me and gave me up for adoption at birth. Still living, my friend.

Second Mother – adopted me at three days old, raised me maybe even raised me to the best of her ability. Mostly estranged for thirty years.

Third Mother – father’s second wife, my aunt, heart mother, mentor and guide, passed four years ago.

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This past week I sat vigil as my second mother let go of this life, with me by her bedside were those who had known her for decades. Women, who had been her friends, her pseudo daughters and who loved her, who knew her, as I did not. They saw a different woman than the one I knew. These women, they also saw me in a different light, knew me only through her and did not welcome my presence. But present I was, not because I wanted to be there but because I needed to be there for my brother and maybe even for myself.

It was strange to hear their stories of this woman who I knew mostly from my childhood. I did not recognize her. There were times I wanted to scream, “You didn’t know.”

I sat vigil. As she lay in that hospital bed, never waking. As I sat, after everyone else left for the night I watched, I remembered and I wondered. I wondered how she could have been so different, shown such a different my.operaface to them and even to my brother than to me. I remembered the tumultuous years of my early teens before I ran away. I remembered the hurt, the hurtful words of childhood. I remembered the loneliness. As I remembered, I kept going back to wondering how she could have been so very different as a mother to me, than she was a friend to these women or even a mother to my brother who hadn’t yet arrived.

Two of the women who were closest to her had known her since they were young teens; their mother had been her friend, when she passed my mother stepped in as a pseudo Aunt. She has known them for thirty-five years. She has spent holidays, vacations, birthdays with them. She has celebrated weddings sitting in the seat of honor, births of children; she has mourned losses, consoled them through divorces and other of lives ups and downs. In their eyes they were losing a ‘second mother’, they are losing a lifeline. The older of the two let me know I had treated her unkindly, that she did not deserve my selfish disregard. Both shared her judgment but she was the only one to voice it, albeit kindly.

This was one of the times my teeth nearly cracked from not saying what was in my heart and on my tongue. As her words flowed, it was all I could do not to respond with venom. I chose not to respond, not to defend, not to try to change hearts and minds. Honestly? Who cares, my own brother who knows at least part of the truth insists I am wrong for not reconciling with my mother.

As I sat vigil, I try to see it from the viewpoint of others. I try to understand their perspective and see things through their eyes. It is nearly impossible for me to reconcile the two ends of the spectrum. Perhaps it is because I have always had such a simple standard;

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My second mother passed from this world on Monday morning. My brother hadn’t arrived. Once again, I had to deliver the news a parent was dead. He is angry with me I think, I do not feel this death the way he feels it. I do not feel untethered by her passing as I did by the death of our shared father and my beloved heart mother. I fear only with the passing of this mother I will lose him, my beloved baby brother.

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For the past ten years, when this mother needed something I have been the one to provide it. Whenever and whatever my brother asked of me, I stepped forward and gave; whether it was to move her from her apartment to assisted living, pay for care, talk to providers; I did what he asked of me. I didn’t do it because I believed I owed it, I did it for love of my brother. Now, I think our last connection is broken, because he doesn’t understand me or my hurt I might lose him, this sense of impending loss breaks me.

So I sat vigil. Then I delivered the news of her passing, I held him as he wept at the airport. Then I watched as my brother pulled himself together to act as executor of her estate. We talked and I agreed the women who had been her friends and her companions should be gifted with any of her personal items, I asked only for two things;

  1. Two pen and ink architectural drawings that match a set I already have.
  2. Family pictures from when we were children.

Clearly, others had been more closely aligned and more dearly loved. I will never agree with my brother or them that it was my filial duty to forget, forgive or reconcile our estrangement. At every opportunity, even in adulthood where she might have reached over the chasm, she made a clear choice I was not important and this is what I reconciled to, her choice.

But I sat vigil. She was not alone, she did not pass without human touch and there was not a lack of compassion, not for her or for those who loved her. My second mother was nearly ninety-four; she lived a full and rich life on her terms. I am not untethered in her passing but wonder if I am losing more than the last vestige of my childhood.

The story of my second family is told in Broken Chains: https://valentinelogar.com/category/series-broken-chains/

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Filed Under: Series: Broken Chains Tagged With: , , , ,
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