The Only Guarantee

There are only two things that every single living being will share. We are all born, and we all eventually die. Literally the only guaranteed thing in any life is that it will one day end. So why do we, as a society, keep death so separate from our lives? It has always perplexed me that we create fear and distance ourselves from the only guaranteed experience we will all share.

At a young age, I told myself not to fear death. My husband, David, lived by that same philosophy, and we took the approach with our first son, Alrik, that death is natural and nothing to be feared. Boy, am I glad we instilled that early on, considering what the universe had planned for our family.

Growing up around pets and livestock, I cannot recall my first exposure to death. There may have been tears, but I do not remember them. What I do know is that having pets is the best way to prepare children for the concept of death, simply because their lifespans are much shorter. My first exposure to human death came in my teens with my great-grandmother, my Nana. She lived with us during the final years of her life. One night, she experienced a medical episode, and my parents called an ambulance. She coded on the way to the hospital, but they stabilized her and she spent her final weeks at a nursing facility. We visited her regularly. I hated that place—the energy, the smells, the gloominess—despite their attempts to make it look cheery and bright.

One afternoon, as I was heading out on a double date, my mother called out to me as I was getting into the car. She paused, then said, "Never mind. Go, have fun!" It wasn't until I got home that evening that she told me Nana had died. When I asked why she hadn't told me sooner, she replied that she wanted me to enjoy a few more happy hours before receiving the sad news.

We traveled to New Hampshire to lay Nana to rest. I will never forget her lavender casket; it was her favorite color and scent. Hers was the first dead human body I had ever seen. People hold rigid expectations for how one should act in certain situations. I realized at a young age that I often did not feel the urge to respond in those expected ways, though I would play along for the sake of others.

Standing next to my Nana’s body, everyone around me was crying, but I didn't feel the urge to join them. I remember trying so hard to force real tears, but I wasn't sad or scared, so the tears barely came. I was happy she had lived a long, beautiful life. I was happy she was no longer stuck in that nursing home, waiting for visiting hours just to see her family. I felt a sense of relief that she was gone. How could I be sad about a life so fully lived?

Over the next decade, I lost a few more people close to me. It always hurts to lose someone you hold dear, but my next intimate experience with death didn't happen until many years later, after I became a mother.

When Alrik was two and a half, my grandfather, my Grampy, passed away to join his bride, Grammy, wherever it is we go when we leave our earthly bodies. We knew his time was coming. We were visiting David's family in Iowa when we got the call that he didn't have much time left. I struggled with the idea of cutting our trip short to drive across the country to be by his side. My mother-in-law took me by both hands, looked me dead in the eye, and said, "You do whatever it takes to get to him. I promise you that you will never regret going, but you will regret it if you don't." The next morning, we packed up our toddler and drove from Iowa to Virginia, and then straight up to New Hampshire.

Knowing we were driving toward a dying relative, we spent the road trip preparing Alrik for what to expect. I know many people who would choose to shield a young child from such an experience, but that was never an option in my mind. Why would you hide the only guarantee in life from your child? I do not fault anyone for their choices; we all have to navigate these situations in our own way, and I am sure many would disagree with my approach. But for David and me, the choice was clear: we were going to be completely open and honest with Alrik, keeping him right by our side the entire time.

On that long drive, we explained to Alrik that Grampy was going to die. We explained that death simply means a person's body stops working, but their soul and energy stay with us forever. I will never forget those precious days with Grampy. On the first day, Alrik was hesitant to touch him. I vividly remember being afraid of old people when I was a child because they look so frail and unfamiliar. But Grampy was still able to sit in his recliner and talk, and by the end of the day, Alrik was sitting on his lap sharing stories.

On the second day, Grampy declined rapidly. We kept our communication with Alrik transparent through every step, sitting by Grampy's side and sharing our love. On the morning of the third day, Grampy passed away before we could get to the nursing facility. My dad called to tell us there was no reason to come anymore because he was gone. I quickly corrected him and asked him not to let anyone move Grampy's body until I could get there to say goodbye.

David dropped me at the door while he and Alrik went to park the truck. My great-uncle met me in the hall and walked me into the room. After saying my private goodbyes, I opened the door to find David and Alrik waiting. Alrik looked at me and said, "Grampy is dead." I knelt down to hug him and said, "Yes, baby. Grampy has died, just like we talked about. Mommy was just saying goodbye to his body." Then, I felt compelled to ask my two-and-a-half-year-old, "Would you like to say goodbye to Grampy's body?"

He emphatically replied, "Yes!"

Gathering my strength, I took a deep breath and walked my toddler into the room. Alrik walked right up to the bed and took his hand. We sat together for a while as he held onto his great-grandfather. Then, Alrik said, "I love you Grampy. Take care of Penny Lane." He smiled, added, "Okay. Goodbye," and we walked out.

Out of the mouths of babes! Alrik had absolutely no fear. At just two and a half years old, he effortlessly connected that Grampy was now with the only other soul we had lost in his lifetime—our dog, Penny Lane. I realized in that moment that our fear of death is not inherent; it is created and projected onto us by how society treats the end of life.

Some might argue that my approach to death is naive because up to that point, I had only experienced the deaths of elderly loved ones. The losses had occurred in the proper, natural order. They might challenge me by saying I would feel entirely different if I experienced a death that fell out of order.

Last year, I did experience a loss that was completely out of the natural order: the death of my child, August, at three years and three months old. The profound irony of August's death is that any lingering fear or anxiety I held about death completely dissolved the moment my son passed away. I was afraid to verbalize this to loved ones because I worried they would assume I was suicidal. Please rest assured, I am not. I believe the entire reason Auggie left was so that I could truly live. To end my life over the grief of losing him would mean his life was lived in vain, and I know my mission here is not yet finished. Yet, I feel a quiet sense of comfort for when my time does eventually come, because a massive part of me is already waiting wherever it is we go when we leave our bodies.

My dear Great Aunt Helen said it best. I visited her in the nursing home the week after August’s Celebration of Life. It took her about fifteen minutes to realize August was not with me. When she finally recognized his absence, she asked, "Where is Auggie?"

I replied, "He died, Auntie."

Without a moment of hesitation, Aunt Helen gave a big smile and said energetically, "That’s okay! You will see him in Heaven!"

Zero grief, zero fear. Just genuine happiness and joy that there is something beyond life on this earth. 

I replied, "I know I will, but I think you will beat me there, so give him a hug and a kiss for me."

I believe the approach I take toward death tremendously helped our family when it hit our home out of the natural order. Death is the only guarantee for all of us.  We do not have to like it, but is beyond our control,  so why distance ourselves from it and fear it? 

I wanted to dive into navigating the death process in this blog today, but this post has become longer than I intended so I will share my experience with that in my next blog. 

I will leave you today with this thought.  When someone close to us dies people often like to offer condolences like, "The world WAS a brighter place with them in it," or worse, "the world is a little less bright now that they are gone."  I choose to flip that perspective. I choose to say, "The world IS a brighter place because they were in it." I choose to put a positive spin on that person's existence when death inevitably takes them.  I choose to believe that every life brings something bright into this world, no matter how long or brief that life was and no matter the circumstances surrounding their death. I choose not to let the guarantee of death darken the light each life leaves in this world.

"Seasons, they will change. Life will make you grow. Death can make you hard. Everything is temporary. Everything will slide. Love will never die." - Imagine Dragons